The children sat on wooden benches, bouncing their legs, clasping their hands, looking worriedly at the brightly lit courtroom.
“We’re being recorded,” immigration judge Audra R. Bain softly said to the microphone Tuesday. Their eyes peered in.
A teenage girl wearing a sparkling shirt smiled at her boyfriend. The 14-year-old boy in a denim jacket sat next to his aunt. Another teenage girl with a heart adorned in her sweatshirt leaned over her mother while sitting in the gallery.
They are one of dozens of children whose deportation cases come before Behne every month at West Los Angeles immigration court. Many face new reality as the Trump administration stripped legal funds for people who cross borders without parents or legal administrators.
As they stand up to the complex legal system and the governments seeking to deport them, we see that children have fewer free lawyers available, increasing the likelihood of deportation.
“These kids often don’t know what’s going on, and without lawyers they’re destined,” said Holly S. Cooper, who was part of the first federal pilot program to represent children in immigration courts more than 20 years ago.
Children in deportation lawsuits (who still have young children) recognize their rights to lawyers, but do not have court-appointed lawyers. Ensuring it means the difference between staying in a country where parents were persecuted, abused or abandoned and elimination.
Most children who arrive at court do not speak English, don’t know how to fill out the form, or present their case when they are up against government lawyers.
“I have represented unaccompanied children for 27 years,” Cooper said. “And people are constantly shocked to see what it looks like for kids to navigate the maze legal system themselves.”
Itzel, whose Uncle Johnny has no money to pay immigration lawyers, came to the United States illegally two years ago. The Trump administration said it would not renew contracts for legal service providers that illegally represent around 26,000 children in the country.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
The 16-year-old girl named Itzel, with a long ponytail and bright eyes, sat outside the court door looking at her toddler cousin last week while waiting for a judge to call her case. She was wearing a Bell High School sweatshirt.
She is part of a wave of children without accompaniment that peaked in 2022.
Itzel’s mom is a drug addict. Her father left when she was young. The cartel has permeated schools in northern Mexico. After Cousins was horribly killed at the party, she escaped with her relatives at the age of 14. Death was a horrifying warning from the cartel, Johnny said. Johnny didn’t say he didn’t want to be identified because he was afraid of his life.
When Itzel crossed the border, she was detained and placed in shelter for two weeks before being released by her aunt and uncle.
“It wasn’t that bad,” she said. “They give us $10 a week to buy things.”
Advocates say Itzel may have legal relief, but she doesn’t have a lawyer to help her, and she can’t afford it. She finds the system is confused and no one in it wants to help her.
Her aunt Laura appeared in front of the judge on her behalf as Itzel was waiting outside the courtroom. Laura was one of more than a dozen families who sat with her children behind the lawyers table without a lawyer.
Just as the Spanish interpreter was translated, a lawyer from the Department of Homeland Security won the Liang at an audio web conference. One after another, children and their relatives said they didn’t have a lawyer. Many have been trying to find it for months.
Behne continued the Itzel case and gave the family several months to find advice. But the chances they might be like that are slim, supporters say. Behne told Laura and others who buried the court that day that if they didn’t get a lawyer, they might have to go ahead with the case themselves.
“Do you know?” Behne asked them one by one as she set up a new hearing date for her children in her court that day. “Do you have any questions?”
Most intentionally. However, several children asked questions as an invitation.
One Pimpuripuri teenager named Oscar explained that he had no resources to pay his lawyer. He wanted to get a job. His great aunt, sitting next to him, piped up that his parents had abandoned him, and that no one had to take care of him.
A judge who frequently smiled at the kids and sometimes asked how they were doing, explained to the two who she didn’t give them work permits.
“I highly recommend going to the immigration help desk,” she said. “They are open in 15 minutes and can ask all of these questions.”
The family wandered around looking for a help desk. But supporters fear that they could be eliminated even under the administration.
As we saw last week, the US immigration court in Los Angeles.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
As of last year, the U.S. Immigration Court has around 33,000 pending accompaniment minors. Non-profit legal services that charge little or no money are overwhelmed, and with reduced federal funding, some lawyers are preparing to cut or terminate services entirely.
“The need is huge. Pro Bono lawyers aren’t progressing well,” said Jenny Viegas, Community Education Manager for Esperanza Immigration Rights Project Los Angeles, which provides free legal services to children at West Los Angeles Immigration Court near LAX.
Viegas was sitting behind a small portable desk in the hallway near Court lobby. There, the group will hold minor consultations on Tuesday, offering orientation ahead of the court for first-time visitors. The boy and his aunt were waiting for someone to help them.
She said the process was “really scary” for many people seeking help.
“Speaking English is difficult to understand the court system,” she said. “But imagine how that would make it feel to someone who is 14 or 12.”
Last month, the program served more than 300 children and worked with immigration judges in courts in Los Angeles and Orange County to move cases through a backlogged system.
Advocates worry that an orientation program funded by another federal grant could be at risk after administration suddenly halted three other federal funding programs, including lawyers and information help desks for children in custody. The programme resumed shortly after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order over the freeze on the administration’s federal grants.
US Immigration Court in Los Angeles.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
The program provides basic information including packets that contain what children on a visa often can qualify for, and a list of lawyers who take cases for free or free.
Itzel’s uncle looked up Puckett’s list of lawyers, but everyone refused to take the case. Hiring a personal lawyer is too expensive, he said. He tries to save one for his wife, but the man takes his own money and disappears. Looking back, Johnny said he wasn’t even a lawyer.
Johnny is barely rubbing it. He works as a truck driver and pays the cartel $2,200 a month, and they still try not to kill his relatives in Mexico. The family lives in a garage and struggles to pay for the food.
“All my money I have is to go to them,” he said.
Despite the uncertainty, Itzel feels good about her new life.
“I’m learning English,” she said with a laugh. And when asked how she felt about the hearing, she said, “Siento Trankilo.”
She saw another boy who knew he had stepped into court from Bell High School. He didn’t even have a lawyer.
Statistics show that without expression, the mitigation rate has plummeted. But their situation is not uncommon.
Approximately 56% of children with pending cases have legal representatives. This is a number that has fallen over the past few years, and fear can plummet if funds don’t pass.
Earlier this month, the administration ended its agreement and basic legal services that fund attorneys representing approximately 4,700 children in California. The contract funded minors who crossed the border alone or without a legal controller.
“If this decision is on the rise and these legal services are refunded, the future will be bleak,” said Marion Donovan Kharst, director of legal services at the Immigration Defenderslow Centre, which represents around 2,000 children, as part of the contract. “Without a lawyer, many children who have escaped from hopeless circumstances and acquired legal ways to stay in the United States will be deported unnecessarily.”
The Center and other legal service providers sued the administration in the Northern District of California, alleging that the program ended for no reason and violated federal laws introduced to protect children from human trafficking.
“The action is particularly harmful as it causes confusion throughout the immigration legal system and comes as the government is restoring a swift docket for removal lawsuits for unaccompanied children,” the lawyer said in the lawsuit.
The immigration court is notoriously bottlenecked in more than 3 million pending cases.
In the meantime, the lawyers and the children they represent are waiting at Limbo as they try to grasp the next move. And families like Itzel imagine what the world would look like if they were deported.
“I joked that she’d be back in Mexico,” Johnny said. “She starts crying. ‘I don’t want to go back there.’ She loves going to school now. ”
Source link
