Panelists Consider Issue of Unaccompanied Minors

“Policy does matter. Policy affects facts on the ground and facts on the ground affect policy,” said Muzaffar Chishti, referring to the policy decisions and long-term trends that that many believe are associated with some 66,000 unaccompanied children, primarily from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, who have sought refuge in the United States so far this year.

Chishti, who is director of the New York office of the Migration Policy Institute, was one of several policymakers and practitioners at the local, regional, and national levels who took part in an October 6 panel at SIPA entitled “No Place for Children: Policy Responses to the Unaccompanied Minors Crisis.” The event was sponsored by several of SIPA’s student groups: the Migration Working Group, Humanitarian Action Working Group, Human Rights Working Group, and Latin American Student Association.

Other panelists who discussed policy challenges and opportunities they have faced in addressing this issue were Nisha Agarwal, commissioner of New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs; Annie Chen, senior program associate at the Vera Institute of Justice; Clara Long, a researcher at Human Rights Watch; and Hans Van de Weerd, deputy vice president of U.S. Programs at the International Rescue Committee. Juan Manuel Benítez, a NY1 reporter and host of PuraPolitíca, served as moderator.

A recurring theme of the conversation was the integral role that policy and politics play in creating and addressing a crisis. The speakers discussed both the causes of the crisis and the long-term and short-term policy changes necessary to respond to the surge.

Panelists disagreed on what exactly led to the dramatic spike in the number of arriving children.

But Chishti said that U.S. domestic policy has contributed to the problem by deprioritizing the deportation of low-risk individuals and offering protection to victims of trafficking.

All the participants, however, agreed that U.S. politics both inflated the magnitude of the crisis and made a national level response more difficult to achieve.

Comprehensive immigration reform, which seemed so close in the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election, is much farther away now, they agreed. Opponents of immigration reform have used the influx of unaccompanied children to shift public opinion, and in the run-up to the midterm elections, there is little incentive for Congress to implement any sort of wide-scale solution.

However, that has not stopped local municipalities and NGOs from responding.

Agarwal, for example, spoke of the increasing number of municipalities adopting pro-immigrant policies, such as opting out of the national enforcement mechanism known as Secure Communities.

New York City, for one, is working to ensure unaccompanied minors are well served. The city council recently approved a proposal to fund legal counsel costs for any unaccompanied minor being processed through expedited hearings at New York's immigration court.

According to Agarwal, while the number of children has increased this year, the city is well equipped to receive them. The real challenge lies in connecting them to services that already exist. As a result, the city has been working with the staff of the Department of Education, Department of Health, and Immigration Court staff to tackle this issue.

Chen echoed the importance of educating this population and connecting them to legal and social services. The Vera Institute provides “Know Your Rights” trainings to individuals being processed in immigration courts nationwide, as well as links this population with services.

Approximately 40 percent of unaccompanied minors screened in federal custody are potentially eligible for relief from removal. The Vera Institute has determined that children with lawyers are allowed to stay in the United States in 52 percent of cases, Chen said; for those without such representation, the figure is only 6 percent.

Van de Weerd agreed that systems are in place to assist unaccompanied minors, but resources are lacking. He noted the political barriers to properly serving children.

Compared to much larger flows of refugees, this “should not be a crisis,” he said. “This country, with its resources and its laws, has the ability to respond.”