Surge in border kids slows as courts clear backlogs

Byron Harris, WFAA11:31 p.m. CDT July 27, 2015


(Photo: WFAA)


DALLAS – Yemely Peña-Ortiz can smile now.
It's been a harrowing year for the 12-year-old since she trekked 2,300 miles north to Texas from her home in Puerto El Triunfo, El Salvador.

Yemely and her mother had little choice but to leave the Pacific coast port town. Yemely's dad, a police officer, was regularly threatened by gangs.

"Many times, they said, 'We're going to kill a police officer — or the daughter of a police officer,'" Yemely recalled.

In buses, cars, and on foot, Yemely and her mother made it to McAllen, Texas.

Yemely Peña-Ortiz and her mother traveled to Texas to escape violence in their homeland. (Photo: WFAA)


"They captured my mom and I," Yemely said. "And then they separated me, and then they transferred me to a shelter."

In the summer of 2014, U.S. immigration courts were flooded with Central American kids who became known as "the surge." Many were fleeing violence in unstable homelands.


The court system is catching up with the influx of young Central American immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S.


In fiscal year 2014, 57,478 unaccompanied kids were apprehended at the U.S. border. This last fiscal year, which ended June 30, that number was 26,685 — a 54 percent decrease, authorities said.

Catholic Charities of Dallas, under a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, helps process the children in Dallas immigration courts.

Young immigrants from Central America were processed through the U.S. court system. (Photo: WFAA)


Attorney Jaime Trevino said the courts here accelerated the processing of children in what became known as the "rocket docket." Now things are normalizing, he said.

"They've gone through most of the surge — children from that July-through-December time period," he said. "Now they're going back to the cases they had before that, that were placed in administrative limbo until they can process those surge kids out."

The case of 16-year-old Denilson Ordoñez is fairly typical. His journey started in Central America.

"My mom left when I was six or seven," he said.


Denilson Ordoñez traveled from Guatemala to Texas to seek asylum. (Photo: WFAA)

Denilson spent 15 days last summer walking some 1,200 miles from Guatemala to Hidalgo, Texas to try to find his mother in the U.S.

At the Texas-Mexico border, he was detained by immigration while he waited for the legal process to begin.

"There was a lot of kids," he said. "It was very sad."

He got legal help from one of scores of attorneys who donated free advice.

Denilson's attorney argued that he should be granted special immigration juvenile status, or SIJ. This lets children who have been abandoned by one or more parents in their native country stay in the U.S. and apply for a green card.

Denilson was granted SIJ status, but most children get deported because they never get a lawyer to help them navigate the legal system.

"Without a lawyer, there's no way those kids can adequately understand what's happening to them and understand what kind of legal relief they might have available," said Bill Holston of the North Texas Human Rights Initiative.

Children waiting to be processed at an immigrant intake center. (Photo: WFAA)


He said there are many attorneys willing to donate their time to represent border kids, but said it's difficult to get them together with clients.

Last summer was so intense that he said border kids were slipping through the cracks.

"These children were being run through the system way too quickly, and I think we're going to look back on that and realize that was a really unjust thing," Holston said.

Yemely has been granted asylum in the U.S. because of the persecution her police officer father and family suffered in El Salvador. The asylum program lets immigrants apply for a green card after one year.

She's now been reunited with both parents in Dallas. To be out of her homeland is a relief, she said.

"I'm not going to be in danger, and nothing's going to happen to me and my family," she said.

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local...logs/30754369/