Page 36 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

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authorization and children are not generally authorized to work in the United States until they are over the age of sixteen .15
The government also began a comprehensive public relations campaign in Central America to deter children from coming to the United States and in a very unusual move created an overseas refugee processing program called the Central American Minors (CAM) program .16 This limited program does allow minor children of parents living with status in the United States to file an application to be considered for refugee admissions or if the child (again acting alone and without representation) could not convince the interviewer that she or he had a bona fide refugee claim to be considered for permission to travel and enter the United States under humanitarian parole . The program was announced in 2014 and by the end of the fiscal year, no child had successfully completed the process . In the late fall of 2015, approximately 90 children were admitted to the United States .17 Further, the Administration coordinated actions with the government of Mexico to try to increase apprehensions of children in Mexico in order to reduce the migration of Central American children to the United States .18
At first these efforts appeared to reduce the number of children arriving at the southern border of the United States . Still in 2015, over 33,000 children arrived . In the last two months of 2015, the numbers of children arriving at the southern border of the United States increased to over 5,000 per month, the highest rate of apprehensions of unaccompanied children in the history of the record-keeping .19 Many are calling the people fleeing El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, “The Other Refugee Crisis” and comparing the flight of Central Americans with the unprecedented number of people fleeing Syria and Afghanistan .20
The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the need for adequate and free legal counsel for non- citizen children who are caught in this web of bureaucratic borders . Although immigration statutes guarantee the right to counsel, there is no counsel provided at government expense .21 Given children’s limited knowledge of the law and of potential avenues for immigration relief, inability to contract and hire legal counsel, and “greater potential for being victims of trafficking and other forms of abuse and neglect or abandonment,” children are in particular
15 In our experience reviewing notes and talking with volunteers who have interviewed over 1,000 young people at the New York Immigration Court, no child or adult has told us they expected a permit to stay and most express surprise when we explain the child may qualify for legal protection and status within the united States.
16 In-Country Refugee/Parole Processing for Minors in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala (Central American Minors – CAM), u.s. ciTizenshiP immigr. serV., http://www.uscis.gov/CAM (last viewed Feb. 21, 2016).
17 Michael D. Shear, Red Tape Slows U.S. Help for Children Fleeing Central America, n.y. Times, Nov. 11, 2015, http:// www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/us/politics/red-tape-slows-us-help-for-children-fleeing-central-america.html.
18 Adam Isacson, Maureen Meyer & Gabriela Morales, Mexico’s Other Border: Security, Migration, and the Humanitarian Crisis at the Line with Central America, wola: adVoc. of hum. rTs. in The am. (June 17, 2014), http:// www.wola.org/publications/mexicos_other_border#usaid.
19 United States Border Patrol Southwest Family Unit Subject and Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions Fiscal Year 2016, u.s. cusToms and border ProTecTion, http://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-border- unaccompanied-children/fy-2016 (last viewed Mar. 18, 2016); see also Julia Preston, U.S. to Open Shelters for New Surge of Youths Crossing the Southwest Border, n.y. Times, (Dec. 7, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/us/ us-to-open-shelters-for-new-surge-of-youths-crossing-southwest-border.html.
20 Clara Long, The Other Refugee Crisis, from Central America to the U.S., The ProgressiVe (Sept. 18, 2015), http:// www.progressive.org/news/2015/09/188320/other-refugee-crisis-central-america-us; see also The Brian Lehrer Show: The Other Refugee Crisis, WNYC (Nov. 6, 2015) (with Lenni B. Benson), available at http://www.wnyc.org/ story/other-refugee-crisis/.
21 8 u.S.C. § 1362. See also 8 u.S.C. § 1229a(b)(4)(A).
Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice