In 2015, the UN High Commission on Refugees interviewed over 400 children who had been taken into custody by the US federal government for illegally crossing the border while unaccompanied by adults. Their stories were heart-wrenching. Maritza, a 15-year-old girl from El Salvador, had fled to the US after discovering that gang members planned on abducting and raping her. David, a 16-year-old boy from Guatemala, had been taken captive by gang members, who told him they planned on killing him — he fled to the US after his cousin, also a captive of the gang, was able to untie their restraints and help him escape. Kevin, a 17-year-old boy from Honduras, came to the US after a gang tried to conscript him. As his grandmother told him, “If you don’t join, the gang will shoot you. If you do join, the rival gang will shoot you — or the cops will shoot you. But if you leave, no one will shoot you.” These children, running from mortal threats at home, came to the US as refugees. Just days afterwards, they would face immigration hearings, which would determine whether they would be deported back to almost certain death. Unless they were lucky enough to find pro bono counsel, these children, and the thousands of others just like them, would have to face these enormously important legal proceedings just as they had faced the terrifying journey to the United States: alone.
The problem of unaccompanied child migrants is not a new one, but in recent years, it has massively intensified. In 2014, the US faced a massive humanitarian crisis at its southern border, as numbers of unaccompanied child migrants surged in response to heightened violence in Central America. That fiscal year, border patrol apprehended over 68,000 children attempting to cross over into America, compared to just 16,067 in 2011. Mostly fleeing violence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, these children, hoping to find asylum and a better life, trek unbelievable distances alone and face horrific dangers to reach the US. Though the number of child migrants has declined since then, partially because Mexico has begun apprehending more of these migrants before they reach the US, thousands of migrant children still cross the border every year. Upon arriving in America, though, these children find that their trials and tribulations are not over. In order to receive asylum, unaccompanied children first have to navigate a complex legal system in only a few days. “Rocket dockets,” a term for the expedited hearings of unaccompanied child migrants, place immigration trials for these cases within 21 days of apprehension, giving the children very little time to prepare for their pivotal immigration hearing. To make matters worse, migrant children aren’t even guaranteed representation, forcing most to hope for pro bono counsel that might never materialize.
Though a number of organizations attempt to provide volunteer lawyers for unaccompanied child migrants, the demand for their services far outflanks their capacity to provide them. Though the federal government did start funding some legal services for these children in response to 2014’s surge, the funding provided was far too low to make a significant change, and served mostly as a token offering — only a few thousand children were reached by these services out of the thousands and thousands awaiting trial. Only around half of the children actually find any form of representation. Alone in detention facilities, these unrepresented children have little hope of winning amnesty status and being allowed to stay in the country.
The US government’s response to this crisis has altogether insufficiently addressed the problem. In response to the 2014 surge in migrants, the US strengthened its border security, ran anti-migration advertisement campaigns in Central America, and pushed for Mexico to implement its Plan Frontera Sur, a much-criticized policy which cracked down on migrants in Mexican territory, pushing many to take much more dangerous routes across the country. The child migrants, unsurprisingly, keep attempting the journey anyway.
The US needs to stop treating the child migrant influx as a criminal wave and instead understand its nature as a refugee crisis. Unaccompanied children are fleeing their home countries out of fear of violence, not greed or convenience. The aforementioned UN study found that 48 percent of child migrants were fleeing specific threats of violence by cartels, gangs, or state actors. Twenty-one percent had faced violence and abuse at home. All in all, 58 percent of the children were considered likely qualifiers for international protection as demanded by the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Of course, deserving such status does a child little good when the child has no representation to make a case. Of those unaccompanied children who faced immigration courts without an attorney in 2014, only 11 percent were allowed to stay in the country, compared to 69 percent for represented children.
In light of this reality, the US needs to implement reasonable reform in its immigration system when it comes to child migrants. “Rocket dockets” will only be humane as long as the hearings they accelerate are fair and just — in order to make this a reality, the US needs to provide representation to the children it detains. Programs that have proved successful already exist, such as a partnership between the Department of Justice and Americorp, which funded 80 lawyers and paralegals working with nonprofits to represent unaccompanied child migrants. To solve a crisis of tens of thousands of unaccompanied child migrants, though, we’ll need a lot more than 80 lawyers, which will necessitate a tremendous increase in the funding — a bitter pill for Congress to swallow. States can also make a difference in this crisis, as California did when it funded lawyers to argue an expected 580 cases this year. If more states can provide more funding, a difference can be made regardless of whether or not Congress takes action. To make change on either of these levels, though, voters and lawmakers alike need to understand exactly what is at stake here: Thousands of refugee children have shown up at our country’s door, hoping to be saved from death and destruction at home. The least we can give them is a fighting chance in our legal system.