ABA Panel Discusses Legal, Humanitarian Needs of Child Migrants
April 15, 2021
Nearly 19,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the southern U.S. border in March 2021, the highest ever monthly record. Meredith Linsky, director of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration, attributed the unprecedented surge to gang violence, poverty, natural disasters, sexual- and gender-based violence, and the breakdown of civil society throughout Central America.
Deteriorating conditions in their countries as well as closure of the U.S. border to 500,000 people during the previous administration contributed to the influx. “Many of those half a million individuals continue in their desperate attempt to enter the United States and seek protection and stability,” said Linsky, who moderated the April 9 ABA webinar “Unaccompanied Children at the Border: Get the Facts from the Experts.” Linsky was joined by Dalia Castillo-Granados, director of the ABA Children’s Immigration Law Academy; Mark Greenberg, senior fellow and director of the Human Service Initiative at the Migration Policy Institute; Michelle L. Saenz-Rodriguez, co-founder and senior partner at Saenz-Rodriguez & Associates, P.C.; and Carly Salazar, legal director of the ABA South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR).
Salazar said many of the unaccompanied children are from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador who are not only seeking to escape violence in their homelands but also to reunite with family members in the United States. “We have seen some new trends with children coming because of the pandemic “and how it has impacted their countries [in terms] of services as well as [because] of hurricanes that happened last year and how they impacted the structures of their lives,” said Salazar.
ProBAR is among the organizations that provide immediate legal services to unaccompanied children in U.S. custody awaiting immigration proceedings. “[The children] need to present a case under the law to be able to stay in the United States. If they do not have a claim under the law, they will get removed,” Salazar said. “They will be sent back to their countries.”
Attorneys with ProBar try to provide legal counsel to the children within 10 days of their placement in U.S. federal custody, a challenge in and of itself, but they also seek to address the physical, mental, and emotional health needs of these children.
Salazar pointed out that children in these immigration proceedings do not get court-appointed attorneys to help present their cases. So, if they can’t find an attorney, they will have to proceed alone in immigration court.
“In this age of politics, we have to remember that these are kids,” Saenz-Rodriguez said. “They have no idea what the law is. Immigration law is complicated to begin with, and when you bring in the element of an unaccompanied minor, it gets even more complicated.”
The ABA Children’s Immigration Law Academy works with unaccompanied teenagers, explaining U.S. immigration laws to them and providing recommendations on other support services.
“Immigrants in immigration courts have rights such as presenting applications for relief, reviewing evidence from the Department of Homeland Security, and presenting witnesses,” Castillo-Granados said, “but without an attorney, these rights are meaningless. [Obtaining] legal status is the first step in achieving self-sufficiency and stability in their lives.”
The legal process in immigration court to determine whether a child will be deported or allowed to remain in this country could take years, Castillo-Granados said. “Without an attorney, the child will [usually] be deported.”
The panelists also talked about the conditions facing migrant minors after crossing the border. In Dallas, unaccompanied minors who arrived at the U.S. border with an older sibling or as part of a group of people possibly will be separated by the time they are brought to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, Saenz-Rodriguez said. The center was set up in March to house a maximum of 3,000 teen boys.
Many of these kids, however, bond with others in pods. “It’s much better than being in a CBP [Customs and Border Protections] detention facility,” Saenz-Rodriguez said, “because it’s not a jail; it does not have the sense of being in a detention facility.”
The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is also facing a huge challenge providing shelter and care for unaccompanied children during a pandemic. “When children come in, the goal [of ORR] is to provide services and shelter and seek to determine if the child has a parent, a close relative, or other appropriate adult who they can live with while they are in the United States awaiting their immigration proceedings,” said Greenberg. However, the HHS vetting process of ensuring that the children will be released safely into the custody of a trusted adult is often long.
“One of the challenges moving forward is not just focusing on the conditions while the children are in [U.S. federal] custody,” Greenberg said, “but also providing greater attention to strengthening services after children have been released.”
The ABA has proposed significant legislative and policy changes to reform the immigration system. It recently released “Achieving America’s Immigration Promise,” which includes policy recommendations for meaningful legal protections for unaccompanied children. The ABA also drafted “Standards for the Custody, Placement and Care; Legal Representation; and Adjudication of Unaccompanied Alien Children in the United States” in 2018 to provide guiding principles for children’s immigration law.
