Thread: Unaccompanied immigrant kids come to Colorado

DENVER – A majority of the children who have travelled thousands of miles without an adult to cross into America have one hope: reuniting with their family.

"Over 90 percent of these children have family here in the United States and they are trying to get here to be reunified," Rudy Gonzales, executive director of Servicios de La Raza, said.

Servicios de La Raza is a human services group in Denver that is working with different national organizations to help some of these unaccompanied immigrant children who crossed the border find relatives in Colorado.

"Reunification is a highly emotional time," Gonzales said. "We get these children re-unified and we get them if they need human service referrals for whatever, counseling, mental health care, food."

Schools are also ready to receive some of these children. The Adams 14 School District in Commerce City and Denver Public Schools both have programs in place for children who don't speak any English with a variety of social issues.

"The first step is just getting them to trust again because they've been so mistreated by systems or by people that they're very reluctant to trust," Pat Sanchez, superintendent of Adams 14 Schools, said. "I think that takes a while to break through."
Sanchez believes that these students should be treated as victims of trauma after their dangerous journey to the United States, often from places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

"So, a great deal of therapy and support and working through that pain and suffering of being traumatized, it takes time," Sanchez said.

Schools are not allowed to ask. Organizations like Servicios de La Raza are not allowed to tell their numbers, but Gonzales says children are continually arriving in Colorado and more are expected in the coming months.

"We also get them legal assistance and we insure that they follow up with immigration court," Gonzales said. "We're a country of due process and we cannot deny them that. We have to honor due process for these children to identify, if in fact, they are refugees."

Gonzales believes they are.

"These children who are flooding the border are children who are escaping crushing poverty, certain death," Gonzales said.
The issue has divided the nation over whether we should or even can afford to help these children who did enter the United States improperly.

"It's easy to get into the other political arguments about should we or shouldn't we do something," Sanchez said. "I think that there's a larger conversation about what's the right thing to do?"


http://www.9news.com/story/news/loca...rado/13439851/

On the contrary, political arguments do need to be taken into consideration as this is a tsunami of illegals that impact us in numerous ways. What is the right thing to do is to first help our vets get the care and assistance they need as well as inner city kids where's gangs and violence are predominate. They have been completely ignored forever and now all of a sudden we are expected to do what is right for illegals that face those same issues? I find that ironic AND racist- helping only the Mexicans. Our vets defended our freedom and again they will be on the bottom of the Tatum pole because you only want to help your own people. If these humane efforts were to include our own Americans perhaps there would not be such a backlash. It is indeed racist to only help those illegal Mexicans!!!

If all these children traveled over a thousand miles by themselves without any help then these children are probably more capable of taking care of themselves than any of our children are and there plenty of homeless children in this country. To think of a American child traveling a thousand miles without water, food and shelter takes a mighty strong child to say the least not to mention traveling over a desert in the summertime. These children must be a lot healthier and stronger than American children.