Socorro Serves Immigrant Children

 

Like those immigrant women trapped in violent relationships, undocumented and abused or abandoned children, also live with the constant threat of deportation.  Every year more than five thousand unaccompanied immigrant children of all ages are taken into U.S. custody because they have left their home countries. Many of these children are fleeing family abuse, prostitution, war, gang violence, persecution, or other horrific situations.

Once these children are apprehended, either at the border or after entering without documentation, they are arrested and placed into deportation proceedings. These children are alone and frightened with nobody to represent their rights. Many of these children have valid claims to stop the deportation proceedings.  Although individuals in proceedings may have legal assistance, there is no right to counsel.  Sadly, without representation these children do not stand a chance alone in immigration court against experienced attorneys from the Department of Homeland Security and are likely to be sent back to the horrendous conditions which they fled.

In the United States unaccompanied children may end up in immigration detention facilities, where they could be held for lengthy periods of time.  These children rarely understand what is happening to them and may be denied information regarding their detention and their ability to be represented by an attorney in proceedings conducted in a language that they understand. In some cases these already traumatized children are


housed with juvenile offenders in a rigid and punitive environment that may lead them to being victimized all over again.
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