Homeland Security?
TomBa
Young and detained: Immigrant kids spending time in jails
By Sonia Nazario
Los Angeles Times
LIBERTY, Texas — Esther Valladares Muñoz, a frightened, brown-eyed girl
abandoned by her parents in Honduras, slipped across the Rio Grande
illegally to
live with an aunt in Texas. She was caught in Houston two years ago and
held for
a civil-deportation hearing. Federal agents jailed her in a coed ward
with rape
suspects and drug addicts. She was 14.
Valladares was treated like a felony suspect. A female guard took her to
a cell
at the Liberty County Jail, 46 miles northeast of Houston. The guard put
on
latex gloves and told the youngster to strip. She had never disrobed in
front of
a stranger. She stood naked while the guard searched her mouth, her
hair, her
entire body.
"I felt like I was drowning," Valladares recalled.
For three weeks, she was not able to phone anyone, including her aunt or
her
grandmother, also in Texas. She spent seven months in the jail, much of
it
locked in a windowless cell, until an immigration judge ordered her
expelled
from the country.
Valladares appealed and was released on her own recognizance. Now 16,
she is
living with her aunt in Donna, Texas, awaiting further legal
proceedings.
Changes coming
The Homeland Security Act, signed Nov. 25 by President Bush, means that
children
such as Esther Valladares Muñoz likely will be treated differently in
the
future. In the most recent Immigration and Naturalization Service tally,
4,896
of these children entered the United States alone and illegally during
fiscal
2001. They were caught and held for more than three days before being
deported
or released on bail into the custody of a relative. Most came from
Central
America, Mexico or China to reunite with a parent, find work, flee
abusive
families or escape lives as street orphans.
A provision of the homeland act gives authorities 14 months to remove
most of
these children from INS custody and place them in the hands of the
Office of
Refugee Resettlement within the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.
The act encourages the refugee office to curtail the use of jails for
detention
in favor of more nurturing, open shelters and foster care.
"Our direction," said Nguyen Van Hanh, head of the refugee office, "is
to look
into foster care as a major way to handle the children."
These children have posed a dilemma for years. Child advocates have
fought to
improve the conditions of their detention. At the same time, however,
immigration authorities have contended that placing many of the children
in
foster homes or releasing them on bail to their relatives, who are
typically in
the United States without proper documents, would make it even easier
for the
children to disappear into the country — and it would encourage more of
them to
enter the United States illegally.
Van Hanh said his office might provide the children with social workers.
But the
homeland act stops short of granting other safeguards sought by child
advocates
and sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., including assigning
the
youngsters U.S.-paid attorneys.
By federal count, 57 percent of the children represent themselves in
Immigration
Court. In some cases, the Department of Justice has objected to
government-paid
lawyers, saying it might lead to costly federal help for all illegal
immigrants.
Waiting for volunteers
Lack of representation often means more jail time because judges
continue cases
hoping an attorney will volunteer to help, says Wendy Young, a
representative of
the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children.
Some of the children attempt suicide. While Valladares was at Liberty, a
16-year-old immigrant boy grew so desperate after being held six months
that he
tried to hang himself.
Lawyers say lack of counsel also means a steady stream of children with
viable
claims for political asylum are being deported back into dangerous
circumstances
in their home countries.
When immigrant children are arrested for allegedly entering the United
States
illegally, they can be charged with "entering without inspection," which
is
treated as a misdemeanor. More typically, they are ordered to appear at
administrative civil deportation hearings and placed in detention while
immigration courts decide whether to expel them or grant them asylum if
they
face persecution in their home countries.
Parents or relatives bail out some of the detained children, a process
that
often takes months. Other youngsters cannot make bail, perhaps because
they have
no parents or relatives nearby. Many times, the INS incarcerates
immigrant
children in juvenile lockups, jailing them with felony suspects.
At the Gila County Juvenile Detention Facility in Globe, Ariz., Juan
Pablo Lopez
Cruz, a 17-year-old Honduran, said he had been locked up as recently as
last
year, dehydrated and suffering from a fever, so weak he could barely
stand.
He said he had asked in vain to see a doctor.
Lopez, who had entered the United States illegally to flee an abusive
mother and
live with a brother in Virginia, said he and an 11-year-old friend were
taken to
an outdoor pen for a half-hour each day, where U.S.-born delinquents
tormented
them by hitting them in the face over and over again with a ball.
"Some had sold drugs," he said. "Some had raped people; others were
murderers."
At the Martin Hall Juvenile Detention Center in Medical Lake, Wash., a
Guatemalan orphan, Alfonso Mendoza Gomez, said in an August interview
that he
spent six months locked up in a cell near an American prisoner who said
he had
killed his own parents.
"There were a lot of criminals," said Mendoza, who was 16 at the time.
"Sometimes they hit the INS kids."
A 16-year-old Mexican girl at Martin Hall tried to slit her wrists, said
Atieno
Odhiambo, an attorney who began representing children as young as 10 at
the
facility in December 2000 for Columbia Legal Services, a nonprofit
organization.
Odhiambo said the jail responded to suicide attempts by putting children
in
solitary confinement.
'I'm not an animal'
Until last December, when the Liberty County Jail near Houston, run by
the
for-profit Corrections Corp. of America, stopped taking minors, it was
second
only to Los Angeles' Los Padrinos Juvenile Detention Center in housing
the
largest number of immigrant children in INS custody.
A Liberty detainee, Edin Armando Zepeda Rodriguez, 17, from Honduras,
said that
he could telephone collect only within the United States and that nobody
would
help him find a number for relatives in Boston. No one in his family
knew where
he was.
On 19 of 21 weekly shifts, he said, his guards spoke only English.
Housed with felons
During his three months at Liberty, Zepeda said, he was housed with six
accused
felons, one charged with selling cocaine, who barked and banged a shoe
against
the stainless-steel toilet. To stay sane, Zepeda said, he ran in circles
around
his cell.
Zepeda said the jail did not feed him or the other children enough. He
and
former guards said the facility, the top financial performer among 79
Corrections Corp. of America facilities in 1998, encouraged them to buy
food
from its commissary. Most immigrant kids, however, had no money.
Guards, including women, peered through his cell window, catching him on
the
toilet. Zepeda was mortified. Occasionally, he lay on the floor under
his bed,
trying to find privacy.
"I fear that in here I'll go crazy," he said. His shoulders shuddered.
Then
tears rolled down his cheeks. He said, sobbing: "I'm not an animal."
Robert Lacy Jr., administrator at the Liberty County Jail, said
detainees were
treated well, and he denied they were underfed. "There was no
encouragement to
get them to buy from the commissary," he said.
INS fears
Some INS agents oppose moving illegal-immigrant children to Health and
Human
Services shelters and foster homes. Sixty-eight percent of the children
in the
current system who are released on bail into the custody of parents or
relatives
subsequently skip out on their court proceedings. Moving the children
into
shelters and foster homes, the agents say, will only make it easier for
them to
run away.
The result, says Carlos Gonzalez, a former INS juvenile coordinator for
the
Houston area, will be to make it easier for the children and their
often-undocumented parents to vanish into America. Moreover, Gonzalez
says,
putting the children in welcoming foster homes and shelters will only
attract
more of them to the United States when their numbers are already on the
rise.
In addition, says Virginia Kice, an INS spokeswoman, some of these
youngsters,
especially troubled orphans who have lived on the streets, are hard to
handle
and would cause problems in foster homes. In isolated cases, Kice says,
smugglers, separated from children by the INS, might kidnap the children
from
foster homes and hold them for payment for their smuggling services.
Curtailing jails would mean using more shelters and foster programs like
the 25
that the INS already employs. They include a shelter operated by
International
Educational Services in Los Fresnos, Texas.
Giving them shelter
The home does not lock children in. "We explain this is not a jail,"
says Roy de
la Cerda Jr., a counselor. "This is a school. We are here to help you."
The only
tall fence encircles a swimming pool, to keep children from drowning.
Treat the children well, director Ruben Gallegos Jr. says, and they
won't run
away. Of the nearly 1,000 who stay there each year, only a handful have
tried to
escape, he says, and most have been caught at an INS checkpoint up the
road.
Eber Ismael Sandoval Andino, 11, from Honduras, showed up in 1999 after
riding
freight trains up through Mexico. Inside the double doors, he was
greeted by a
sign embroidered in cursive letters that said: "Home Sweet Home." During
school,
which began with the Pledge of Allegiance, he leaned over a book with
large type
to read short sentences in Spanish.
One afternoon, he and other boys went to a bowling alley. Sandoval ran
partway
down a lane and hurled the ball the rest of the way, then shrieked with
joy,
dancing and kicking up his heels all the way back to his seat.
Before going to bed, everyone got PopTarts and milk.
"Thank you for allowing us to have a great time today," Sandoval told
Mike
Perez, a shelter worker.
"Good night, sir," Perez responded, an evening tradition.
Perez shook hands with each boy as he filed into a bedroom to sleep.
Every bed
had its child's name above the headboard. Each month, children with
birthdays
found their photos on a bulletin board proclaiming: "You're So
Special!"
Everyone celebrated with cake and ice cream or banana splits crowned
with
candles.
Counselors talked with children who seemed depressed. Once a week, Olga
Cantarero, a coordinator with a nonprofit immigrant-aid group, Proyecto
Libertad, instructed children on their legal rights.
'They are children'
A well-to-do man from a nearby community drove up one day when the
children were
playing soccer on part of the 34 acres surrounding the home.
"Are you spending my tax money on these illegal aliens?" Gallegos says
the man
asked. He was incensed, Gallegos says, because he had seen a newspaper
picture
of children in the swimming pool. "What are you doing?" he asked
Gallegos.
"Teaching them how to swim better across the Rio Grande?"
To which Gallegos responded: "They are children. I could care less if
they are
immigrants. They are children."
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I thought this was the land of the free, and home of the brave....
TomBa
Bob & Carole
Homeland Security?
Group: alt.support.boy-lovers Date: Sun, Feb 2, 2003, 8:11pm (EST+5)
From: to...@ziplip.com (TomBa)
Bob replies:
This IS the land of the free...and the home of the pedophile
hunters....:-)
Things changed after 9-11....
It's unfortunate for the children, but these wetbacks have to learn
that if you enter this country illegally, you WILL be deported......