Immigration Article of the Day: Treacherous Journey: Child Migrants Navigating the U.S. Immigration System by Blaine Bookey
Treacherous Journey: Child Migrants Navigating the U.S. Immigration System by Blaine Bookey, University of California Hastings College of the Law 2014 Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (GCRS), February 2014 UC Hastings Research Paper No. 181
Abstract: A Treacherous Journey: Child Migrants Navigating the U.S. Immigration System addresses the issues raised by the recent historic and unabated increase in the number of children coming unaccompanied – without a parent or legal guardian – to the United States. From 6,000-8,000 unaccompanied children entering U.S. custody, the numbers surged to 13,625 in Fiscal Year 2012 and 24,668 in Fiscal Year 2013. The government has predicted that as many as 60,000 or more unaccompanied children could enter the United States in Fiscal Year 2014. These children come from all over the world, but the majority arrive from Mexico and Central America, in particular the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Children come unaccompanied to the United States for a range of reasons. Numerous reports and the children themselves say that increasing violence in their home communities and a lack of protection against this violence spurred them to flee. Children also travel alone to escape severe intrafamilial abuse, abandonment, exploitation, deep deprivation, forced marriage, or female genital cutting. Others are trafficked to the United States for sexual or labor exploitation. Upon arrival, some children reunite with family members they have not seen in many years, but their migration is often motivated by violence and other factors, in addition to family separation.
Their journeys may be as harrowing as the experiences they are fleeing, with children often facing sexual violence or other abuses as they travel. The children’s challenges continue when U.S. immigration authorities apprehend them, take them into the custody of the federal government, and place them in deportation proceedings. There, they are treated as “adults in miniature” and have no right to appointed counsel and no one to protect their best interests as children in the legal system. In addition, existing forms of immigration relief do not provide sufficient safeguards to protect against deportation when it is contrary to their best interests.
KJ