Thread: Border-Crossing Kids Need more Assistance, say Child Advoc

Border-Crossing Kids Need more Assistance, say Child Advocates
thecuttingedgenews.com
Susan Ferriss
September 5th 2011

In December 2010, Washington attorney Jennifer Podkul received a call from the Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office, asking to speak with one of her clients. The client was a minor, 17, when Podkul, a legal aid group attorney, happened to meet him during a routine visit to a Virginia juvenile jail. The boy had been sent to the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center, which has an immigration wing, after U.S. Border Patrol agents caught him, unaccompanied by any family members, crossing into Texas from Mexico for the third time.

The first time the boy had crossed into the United States was in 2009, he was 16, with a backpack of marijuana a gang told him to carry. He told Podkul he had asked agents then if he could stay and offered to give them information about smuggling routes.

Instead, the boy told the lawyer, the agents had their own proposal: They told him to go back to Mexico and get more information, including names of smugglers. The request was a direct violation of the intent of 2008 federal legislation designed to help stop abuse of minors by human traffickers, Podkul told iWatch News.

Now it appeared that the IG’s office wanted the boy to cooperate in their own investigation of how the agents had treated him.

“They wanted to show him photos of the agents,â€

Good article, but unfortunately it was too long to read.