Thread: Children in limbo

Children in limbo


http://www.statesman.com/news/content/n ... inors.html

After dire path to U.S., unaccompanied immigrant kids wait in shelter while awaiting their fate

By Juan Castillo

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Monday, September 03, 2007

CONROE — From his home in Honduras, "Joel," a boy in the company of 15 adult strangers, embarked on a poignant, nightmarish and ultimately illegal odyssey to the United States. He carried one dream: to live again with his parents.

They left him for their own journey north when he was a year old, believing it was the best way to provide for their family. That was 16 years ago. Joel said he understood why they left; in Honduras, poverty is rampant.

Financed by his father's $2,000 payment to a smuggler and sustained by Joel's singular wish, his 1,800-mile quest across borders began with a frigid stowaway ride on a freight train from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, and continued by bus to Piedras Negras in Coahuila, Mexico. He and his fellow travelers swam across the perilously brimming Rio Grande into the United States. A punishing, three-day march followed, through rugged ranch lands in Southwest Texas.

The journey tested the mettle of even his older companions, some of whom he helped carry when they dropped of exhaustion. It ended ingloriously in the middle of nowhere in the strange country that, at least for Joel, held the promise of a new, better life with family.

"We were surrounded by immigration officers on horseback. They arrested all of us," Joel said.

In the past, Joel would have stayed in the custody of immigration officials — either locked up with adult illegal immigrants or with juvenile delinquents.

Instead, after a week in an immigration lockup, he was released from the Department of Homeland Security to a federal agency whose mission is not to deport children like Joel, but to place them with parents or guardians in the United States until an immigration judge rules on their fate.

The practice, mandated by a 2002 federal law, highlights the ethical, legal and political dilemmas presented when minors turn up alone on U.S. lands. Every year, the agency, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, takes in thousands of unaccompanied children and places them in its shelters and foster homes until it identifies potential sponsors.

Sometimes the children are refugees fleeing war or persecution, orphans living on the street or the victims of rape and abuse, neglect or abandonment. According to federal officials and advocates, some are sent north by their families to seek work or are exploited by human traffickers. Others like Joel are simply trying to rejoin family.

"These are children who end up doing what they think they have to do for their own survival and for the survival of their family," said Susan Krehbiel, a vice president with Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which provides professional child welfare services for minors in the refugee resettlement shelters.

But the practice of transferring immigrant minors from the custody of law enforcement to a social services arm of the government has its critics.

"It's a hole in the wall that we're supposed to be building against illegal immigration," said Don Barnett, a fellow with the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stronger enforcement of immigration lawsand less immigration.
Many minors don't attend hearings

In 2005, about 7,800 unaccompanied immigrant minors stayed in 36 facilities —16are in Texas — run by refugee resettlement office contractors. Their average length of stay was 45 days.

Not everyone gets to stay in the U.S.; in 2006, 23 percent were sent back to their home countries because officials couldn't identify suitable sponsors.

But 68 percent of youths released from custody to sponsors in the U.S. failed to attend their immigration hearings, according to a 2001 sample survey by the Department of Justice. Such statistics, critics say, are evidence that smugglers and families are exploiting the system.

Americans, Barnett said, "have a hard time throwing (children) back across the border and saying, 'OK, find your way home,' or putting them on a plane." But, he said, it is reasonable to expect the government to hold sponsors accountable for bringing youths to hearings.

It is the sponsor's responsibility to ensure that a child shows up for immigration hearings, said a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Krehbiel said more follow-up services, such as visits by social workers, would increase the rate of court appearances, adding that only 5 percent of children receive such services after their release.

A spokeswoman for the resettlement office said all potential sponsors undergo rigorous criminal and background checks that include immigration status, but that does not preclude release of a child to a relative who is in the country illegally if the relative meets the agency's criteria.

Some child advocates say children can languish in federal custody if parents fear being arrested by the Department of Homeland Security.

They also say decisions about how to treat children fleeing trauma and problems not of their own making should be rooted in what is in their best interest, regardless of legal status.

"The base line needs to be what would we want as Americans for our children (if they) were caught in that plight abroad," said Christopher Nugent,a Washington-based attorney who is an advocate for unaccompanied immigrant minors. "Would we want them in large institutional facilities, in sweat pants and sweat shirts, or would we want them in less institutional, family-type home settings?"


A poor record of caring for kids

Lawmakers chose the latter option in 2002, when they passed the bill creating the Department of Homeland Security. The new law enforcement agency took over the former Immigration and Naturalization Service but transferred the care and custody of illegal immigrant children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Health and Human Services Department.

With the law, Congress acknowledged that the INS had a poor record of caring for children and conflicting interests when acting simultaneously as police officer, prosecutor and guardian, Nugent said. Under the INS, many children were routinely held in detention centers with adults caught illegally entering or living in the country. About one-third were locked up with juvenile delinquents, even when they had committed no crime.

"They were standard facilities with bars and cells and serpentine wire. They would not provide education, very little health care," said Juan Sánchez, president of the nonprofit Southwest Key Programs, based in Austin. The agency operates a shelter in Conroe and seven others in Texas, Arizona and California under a $27 million-per-year contract with the refugee resettlement agency.

The agency's programs emerged from a 1997 settlement of class-action lawsuit Reno v. Flores, which set new standards for care, detention and release of immigrant minors. Following the Flores case, the federal government swapped its detention-type approach for new strategies that recognize that most of the children in its custody have endured trauma.

"The journey itself is dangerous," Krehbiel said. "Then they get to the border, and some are apprehended. You can imagine if you're a 10-year-old or 12-year-old and all of a sudden, there's officers with guns arresting you."

But even supporters say there is room for improvement.

In March, dozens of immigrant children in a federal shelter in Nixon — operated by Away From Home Inc. — were moved amid allegations of sexual abuse by a staff member.

Nugent said the shelters run by private contractors operate out of the public eye. "It's not like there's a lot of congressional or public scrutiny," he said.

Sánchez recently fended off accusations by the League of United Latin American Citizens and other Austin groups that its shelters are tantamount to prisons. He said the shelters are state-licensed child care facilities and that federal and state officials make announced and unannounced visits.

"What's the alternative?" asked Sánchez. "It's detention, which is illegal, and it's the streets where there's nothing for these kids, no medical care, no supervision, no education."

A spokeswoman for the Office of Refugee Resettlement declined to comment on what she called a political debate.

"These are children who by no fault of their own ended up here," Tara Wall said. "Concerned citizens should take this up with their lawmakers."


Clinging to a dream

Behind a white picket fence in a dormlike shelter ensconced in the East Texas pines, Joel still dreamed of reaching his parents. (At the request of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the American-Statesman is not using his real name.)

When interviewed last month at the pastoral complex in Conroe with its tidy rooms and twin beds, he had lived there 50 days. In a windowless office in the 22,600-square-foot main building, the athletic-looking teenager with light skin and a thick shock of blond hair straddled a chair and told a riveting tale about his journey.

He wore black gym pants, a white T-shirt, socks and sandals — items among the five sets of clothes issued to minors when they arrive. Alternately stroking a black pocket comb and tapping it against his knee, his head slightly bowed in the presence of elders, Joel chattered in Spanish in long, run-on sentences. He spoke with both childlike excitement and a wisdom beyond his years.

The freight train ride had been unbearably cold, the Rio Grande deeper and bigger than he'd ever imagined, he said. After crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, his group trudged for miles, skirting a Border Patrol checkpoint through private ranch lands.

With the smuggler exhorting the group to walk briskly in the prickly brush and promising that they would soon see the big-city lights, they marched two nights — in 7 p.m.-to-7 a.m. marathons — and another day.

"We didn't have a single drop of water. The women were fainting. Others were struggling. Some in the group got lost. We were afraid," Joel recalled. He and a few others carried the stragglers.

The story moves Maria Mitchell, an attorney with Catholic Charities of Houston, who often visits the shelter. Mitchell said such compassion is not uncommon among children thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

"Other people were abandoning their own relatives. But he felt he couldn't leave them behind," Mitchell said.

Eventually, Joel, too, teetered between delirium and exhaustion. "I lost my mind. I was extremely weak and I fell asleep."

Rustled awake later, still in a daze, he realized they'd been caught by the Border Patrol.

At Houston-area shelters for illegal immigrant minors, one of Mitchell's duties is to explain to new arrivals such as Joel their legal rights. The talks have a sobering lesson: Legal visas are extremely limited, and release to relatives or guardians doesn't guarantee they can stay in the United States.

"That's when the reality hits them," Mitchell said. Whether Joel would be reunited with his parents — even if only temporarily — hinged on whether they met the refugee resettlement office's criteria and passed background checks.

Joel clung to his dream anyway. Conroe, he hoped, was a temporary stop en route to Maryland, where he could be reunited with his parents and finally meet his two sisters, who were born in the United States. Then, he said, the journey would have been worth his ordeal.

He dreamed, too, of getting an education and a job and of being able to send money to his grandparents who raised him in Honduras.

Of the United States, he said, momentarily lifting his eyes and smiling: "They tell me it's a beautiful country and a great place to work."

jcastillo@statesman.com; 445-3635

Seeing that "Joel" is 17 years of age I don't think you can really consider him legally a "child". While he may not be exactly at the age of majority he is close enough. In fact seeing that "Joel" is from honduras, he could easily have several children of his own.

In my opinion anyone who is caught in the US illegally - regardless of age needs to be kept in a confined environment so they can't disappear. The whole concept of releasing illegal alien minors to illegal alien relatives shows real incompetence on the part of the government. Illegals wouldn't be stupid enough to show up in court.

Originally Posted by GREGAGREATAMERICAN

"What's the alternative?" asked Sánchez. "It's detention, which is illegal, and it's the streets where there's nothing for these kids, no medical care, no supervision, no education."

A spokeswoman for the Office of Refugee Resettlement declined to comment on what she called a political debate.

"These are children who by no fault of their own ended up here," Tara Wall said. "Concerned citizens should take this up with their lawmakers."

How is detention illegal if someone (regardless of age) came here illegally?

and

It's sounds to me like "Joel" ending up here illegally was entirely his own doing.

Since Joel has grandparents in Honduras I don't understand why he could not fly home to his grandparents ?

Why not put these kids in foster homes in their own countries ?............no one wants them I suppose.............

Originally Posted by GREGAGREATAMERICAN

Joel said he understood why they left; in Honduras, poverty is rampant.

Poverty is relative. I would say if you have parents, grandparents, and apparently food to eat, you are not poor.

Originally Posted by USPatriot

Since Joel has grandparents in Honduras I don't understand why he could not fly home to his grandparents ?

Why not put these kids in foster homes in their own countries ?............no one wants them I suppose.............

How do we even know how old "Joel" really is? Or who "Joel" is for that matter?

Originally Posted by NoIllegalsAllowed

Originally Posted by USPatriot

Since Joel has grandparents in Honduras I don't understand why he could not fly home to his grandparents ?

Why not put these kids in foster homes in their own countries ?............no one wants them I suppose.............

How do we even know how old "Joel" really is? Or who "Joel" is for that matter?

Joel could be 20 years old and a wanted gang member.

Think of this,

Joe American has a kid and lives in Alabama. He moves to Texas but can't afford to bring his kid, lets say the kid is 5 years old.

Joe American meets some guy on the street. He agrees to give him $50 to bring the kid to Texas in a month.

So in a month the guy picks up the kid from a relatives house and starts to take him to Texas. While on the way to Joe American's new residence in Texas they stop at a gas station. The guy is arrested on an arrest warrant (let's say he's a wanted rapist) and the kid is left at the gas station.

The kid wanders off and is almost dead due to dehydration when he is found by a farmer.

Joe American would get arrested. Why don't child abuse/negligence laws apply to illegals?

I know of a case where there was a couple (Americans). Let's call them Joe and Jane.

Joe and Jane had some drug issues. Joe and Jane had a baby let's call it Baby A. Joe and Jane went out to score drugs with the Baby A.

Joe and Jane got busted. Baby A went into foster care because they were considered to be unfit parents due to taking Baby A with them to buy illegal drugs.

But yet dragging a child across the desert to illegally break into a country is alright?

Hola, my name is Jose Sanchez, I am 10 years old.