A 16 -year -old pregnant girl who had been the victim of sexual trafficking since she was 6 years old crossed the border from Mexico seeking to avoid the same type of abuse of her son.
A group based in Los Angeles gave legal help to the immigrant teenager and her small child of 1 year so that they could remain safely in the United States, the group is part of a series of organizations that on Wednesday demanded the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States for “closing critical legal representation programs for unaccompanied immigrant children.”
“What kind of system do we have when our government is more willing to pay a lawyer to deport a child than to provide the same child to a lawyer whose job is to protect their rights?” Álvaro Huerta, director of litigation and defense of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said in a statement. The claim was filed in a Federal District Court in California.
President Donald Trump promoted during his campaign last year that protected children and women from trafficking in persons in their first term. But lawyers say that their current administration has put thousands of children in danger by ending the funds for lawyers that help them through the immigration court processes.
For many immigrant children, lost legal aid could mean being separated from families, tutors or sponsors who are or can take care of them in the US. UU. And prevent them from ending in abusive and possibly mortal situations, lawyers argue.
When canceling the contract to finance the groups that provide legal assistance, organizations that represent children have been forced to fire lawyers, find other ways to finance legal assistance or, ultimately, withdraw from cases.
The Organization of Huerta, who helped the victim of adolescent sex trafficking and her baby, has already been forced to give dismissal notices to 27 of her employees to try to stay financially viable and help as many clients as possible, according to the demand. The Estrella del Paso Group, in El Paso, Texas, despises 18 of 28 employees in its unaccompanied children program and the Galveston-Houston (GHRIP) immigration representation will have to fire most of the 19 employees who provide services to unaccompanied children.
One of Ghrip’s clients is a 2 -year -old boy who arrived with his teenage mother, also an unaccompanied minor who was a victim of abuse. Ghirp’s managing lawyer, Alexa Sendukas, told NBC News that she is trying to obtain special immigrants status for the small child, a several steps process that implies looking for a determination of a local youth court that is not better to return it to her country of origin.
Obtaining a permanent legal status for the child could take five years or more, but the fund cuts endanger the ability of Sendukas to remain in the case, he said. GHIRP has around 300 clients of unaccompanied children whose legal representation was paid for the financing that has been reduced. The organization is trying to determine what it can do, because lawyers also have ethical obligations that complicate the withdrawal of cases.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to NBC News requests to comment on the demand and criticism of legal groups on fund cuts and their effects projected on children.
On a possible deportation track
Some children who have fled traffic, violence, hunger and abuse are being stripped of legal assistance to help them remain in the United States, since the Trump administration has made them a priority for deportation, immigrant legal groups said.
NBC News reported last month that the Trump administration planned to locate and potentially deport unaccompanied children.
Children as a 12 -year -old child from Central America are at risk with a severe disability that harms their ability to speak. Emily Norman, managing director of Hartford, Connecticut, Children’s Office who need defense, friendly, has been representing it.
His mother died, his father was physically abusive and the child was forced to work since he was even younger, while he endured bullying for his disability, Norman said. He was finally abandoned by his father, and a family member who brought him to the United States can no longer take care of him, he said.
After months of weekly and long meetings, the child has begun to be able to communicate and friendly was about to begin the process of helping him request a youth state of special immigrants, a designation for children under 21 who have been abused, abandoned or careless.
Although the special status can lead to a legal permanent residence, the child is now in deportation procedures in the Immigration Court. “Now we have lost the funds and we cannot continue representing it,” said Norman.
“My worst fear is that it will be deported back to a country where you have no one to take care of it and can’t communicate. How will you ask for help if you need it?” Norman said, his voice became emotional. “We have so many children in this position and now we will have to call them and tell them: ‘We said we would be there for you and now it is only'”.
Only around 1 out of 5 of the 118,000 unaccompanied children in the United States have legal representation, letting many of them appear only in the court or with a father, tutor or brother who cannot speak English or is not likely that they have much more understanding of the language, according to Bilal Akaryar, a deposit of Acacia Center for Justice deposit.
Acacia, whose contract with the Government was not renewed, had outsource more than 100 groups throughout the country, including the type, to provide legal assistance to some 26,000 unaccompanied children.
The lawyers of the groups that have lost funds said that their clients have begun to obtain notices to appear for the hearings of the immigration courts, even if the child is in the midst of obtaining some type of protection against deportation and permission to remain in the US.
The Trump administration will now share the adult immigration state that sponsor children not accompanied with the Police and the refugee resettlement office. This means that Orr can decide not to free children to sponsors (parents, tutors or relatives) because the sponsor does not have a legal immigration status.
The impact of some of the recent changes begins to emerge.
“We have seen situations in which the members of the love family who have attended children previously seek to sponsor them out of our custody and cannot do so, and are leading to a greater application for transfer to long -term parenting care,” Sendukas de Ghirp said. “We have even seen an increase in children’s requests for voluntary item because they believe there is no one who can receive them and will be arrested forever.”
‘Left on your own’
During his first mandate, Trump’s “zero tolerance policy” culminated in the separation of children from their parents or guardians caused a heavy reaction. While the lawyers who spoke with NBC News were not willing to equate the dispossession of legal representation to border separations, several said the new policy would traumatize children, many of whom have already been repeatedly traumatized.
Kayleen Hartman, managing lawyer of Kind for Family Unity, focuses on children who have been separated from her parents. Hartman said he is “finding heartbreaking” that he can have to end the representation of a girl who was about 7 years old when he was “physically, crying, with force” separated from his father under Trump’s policy by agents and officers who did not speak her and her father’s indigenous language.
The father was deported and the girl was sent to a parenting care house where she was reprimanded not to speak and understand the Spanish, according to Hartman. She was relocated to the house of distant relatives and bounced around other homes, before ending with another distant relative, where she was sexually assaulted by a member of the male family, Hartman said. The girl told a friend of the assault and the friend of the friend informed state workers of child welfare, who put the girl in parenting care. It was when friendly picked up his case, said Hartman. Friendly he used a possible process by the unification force of the Biden family to gather it with his father in the United States
Hartman said that she and her team are “fighting” to establish a temporary legal status for the girl before the guy has to close the case, but immigration arrears make it impossible to do it quickly.
Almost all the clients with whom they feel currently to tell them that they cannot be their lawyers “are clients with a history and history of trauma,” said Hartman. “These are children who have been abandoned and left alone.”
Kind has about 4,400 cases that were supported by funds from the Acacia Center for Justice. Wendy Young, president of Kind, said the financing limit means that the group has had to reduce size, dismissing several employees. The group is now trying to place cases with Pro Bono partners of the private sector, but, in most cases, you will have to retire, said Young.
The result will be that children will not be presented for procedures and will not obtain protections for which they can be eligible.
“This administration is moving us 30 years old,” said Young, a time when “when the children were forced to navigate a complex adversary immigration system in a court hall by themselves, regardless of whether they were 2 years or 6 years old.”
