U.S. Immigration Law’s Impacts on Families and Juveniles

Families and children often are in the immigration news.  CNN tells the tragic story of a U.S. citizen who was murdered in Mexico while he waited with his Mexican national wife to obtain the necessary pwaperwork to come lawfully to this country.

On a more optimistic note, Public Counsel’s Kristen Jackson has the cover story in the Los Angeles Lawyer about Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. “Sitting largely unnoticed on a single page of the Immigration and Nationality Act is a unique classification whose purpose is not only to benefit immigrant children but also to do so consistent with accepted child welfare principles and with international norms. This classification is known as Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, or SIJS.”  She concludes:  “SIJS has not opened the floodgates to unauthorized immigration, but it has changed thousands of children’s and adoptive parents’ lives. The DREAM Act has the same potential to transform politics, policy, and the futures of many people.”

Also focusing on juveniles and teh U.S. immigration laws, Elizabeth Frankel (Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights at the University of Chicago) has published an article in the Duke Forum on Law and Social Change entitled “Detention and Deportation with Inadequate Due Process: The Devastating Consequences of Juvenile Involvement with Law Enforcement for Immigrant Youth.”  The article focuses on the growing population of immigrant children apprehended each year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after coming into contact with state and local police. It examines how these youth are forced to navigate two competing custodial and legal systems—the juvenile justice and immigration systems—with the likely result that they will end up detained for lengthy periods of time and ultimately deported. The article argues that the unique needs and vulnerabilities of these children gives rise to a due process right to counsel at government expense.

KJ