Migrant children in search of justice: A two-year-old’s day in Immigration Court

Once released, the children must face a different and more difficult courtroom test: In another immigration courthouse, somewhere in America, they will have to make a case that they meet the standard for asylum, or they will be deported.

By: New York Times | New York | Published: October 9, 2018 9:00:54 am

Migrant children in search of justice: A two-year-oldâ€™s day in Immigration Court

The youngest child to come before the bench in federal immigration courtroom No. 14 was so small she had to be lifted into the chair. Even the judge in her black robes breathed a soft “aww” as her latest case perched on the brown leather.

Her feet stuck out from the seat in small grey sneakers, her legs too short to dangle. Her fists were stuffed under her knees. As soon as the caseworker who had sat her there turned to go, she let out a whimper that rose to a thin howl, her crumpled face a bursting dam.

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The girl, Fernanda Jacqueline Davila, was 2 years old: brief life, long journey. The caseworker, a big-boned man from the shelter that had been contracted to raise her since she was taken from her grandmother at the border in late July, was the only person in the room she had met before that day.

“How old are you?” the judge asked after she had motioned for the caseworker to return to Fernanda’s side and the tears had stopped. “Do you speak Spanish?”

An interpreter bent toward the child and caught her eye, repeating the questions in Spanish. Fernanda’s mouse-brown pigtails brushed the back of the chair, but she stayed silent, eyes big. “She’s … she’s nodding her head,” the judge said, peering down from the bench through black-rim glasses.

This afternoon in New York immigration court, Judge Randa Zagzoug had nearly 30 children to hear from, ages 2-17. Fernanda was No. 26.

Zagzoug came to the bench in 2012, around the time children started showing up by the thousands at the border on their own, mostly from Central America. Now that immigration controls have stiffened in response, more children than ever are in government custody, for far longer than they ever have — weeks turning to months in shelters that were never meant to become homes.

The result is a new wave of children in the immigration courts across America. Though the exact figures are not known, lawyers who work with immigrants said a large number of migrant children now being held in detention has given rise to a highly unusual situation: more and more young children coming to court.

“We rarely had children under the age of 6 until the last year or so,” said Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “We started seeing them as a regular presence in our docket.”

These young immigrants are stranded at the junction of several forces: the Trump administration’s determination to discourage immigrants from trying to cross the border; the continuing flow of children journeying by themselves from Central America; the lingering effects of last summer’s family-separation crisis at the border; and a new government policy that has made it much more difficult for relatives to claim children from federal custody.

At the moment, the government’s rolls include hundreds of children in shelters and temporary foster care programs who were taken from an adult at the border, whether a parent, grandparent or some other companion. About 13,000 children who came to the United States on their own were being held in federally contracted shelters this month, more than five times the number in May 2017.

All of which means there are more children showing up more often to federal immigration courtrooms like Zagzoug’s, at hearings that could determine whether they will be deported, reunited with their parents, or granted the asylum that their parents desperately want for them. They often sit at counsel tables alone, unaccompanied by any family and sometimes without even a lawyer.

Under the circumstances, the children in Courtroom 14, many of whom were from a shelter operated by the Cayuga Centers, were fortunate. Many were allowed to go home at night to a foster family, though they returned to the shelter by day. And they could count on lawyers from Catholic Charities, which receives funding from a nonprofit group to represent immigrant children in New York City shelters.

“We used to just deal with teenagers,” one lawyer, Jodi Ziesemer, said as she ushered children to the 14th floor before the hearings began. “Now they’re … ” Her gaze swept the small group. Fernanda was gripping a green apple with both hands, occasionally taking a bite. As they moved down the hallway, her caseworker picked her up and carried her toward the court.

In a spotlessly bright waiting room, Ziesemer’s colleague, Miguel Medrano, spent a few minutes trying to prepare Fernanda for court. He bent low to talk to her, asking her name, her age, whether she spoke English or Spanish. “Sí?” he prompted her. No response. He shook his head. “Well, if she can’t, she can’t.” He turned back to her and tried again in English. “So we’re going to see the judge,” he said gently. No response.

“She’s very shy,” the caseworker said.

Inside the courtroom, Zagzoug picked up the day’s juvenile detained docket. “It’s Sept. 27, 2018, and this is Judge Randa Zagzoug,” she said for the record. She introduced Ziesemer, who grinned and waved and nodded at each child as he or she came up to the respondents’ table, and the Department of Homeland Security lawyer, who did not look over from the government’s table. The judge tried to explain the proceedings to each child who sat before her, facing the gold-fringed American flag.

Pascual — “Pascualito,” a caseworker called him — was 6. He had been living at the shelter since being separated from his father by immigration authorities at the border in May.

Marilyn, 11, was hoping to join her mother in Florida. But because the Trump administration was now requiring relatives who wanted to take children out of government custody to undergo fingerprinting and background checks, it might take another three or four months.

And so it went for many of the other children: Came by herself. Came by himself. Supposed to go live with a mother, an uncle, a cousin, in California, in Michigan, in Atlanta.

The judge ended each hearing with words of encouragement: “Good luck.” “Buena suerte,” repeated the translator, child after child.

When Ziesemer started at Catholic Charities a decade ago, the program for child immigrants appearing in court on their own was so small that it was run by a part-time coordinator, and all their clients could fit in a roughly 10-bed shelter, a small house in Queens. Now there are staff members conducting screenings of seven or eight children a day, trying to coax basic facts out of children who might be too young or too frightened to articulate what had happened to them. There are so many that they sometimes do not meet their clients until the day of their hearings.

Until a couple of months ago, most of the children never would have stayed in a shelter long enough to end up alone before a judge. But the bottleneck in the background-check process means longer stays in custody, and the possibility that some children might have to see a judge multiple times before being delivered to their mother or uncle or cousin. The shelters are now almost full — not because more children are entering the country, immigration advocates say, but because the government has tossed up another obstacle to leaving.

Once released, the children must face a different and more difficult courtroom test: In another immigration courthouse, somewhere in America, they will have to make a case that they meet the standard for asylum, or they will be deported. In some cases, they will have to testify about the trauma they experienced or the danger from which they fled.

Things were simpler for Fernanda, whose family in Honduras wanted her returned. Born to a teenage mother four months after her father died in a car accident, Fernanda had been raised by her paternal grandparents in a working-class suburb of Tegucigalpa, the capital. Hector Enrique Lazo and Amada Vallecillos doted on their granddaughter. She was the only piece of their son they had left.

But in July — unexpectedly, according to Lazo — Fernanda’s maternal grandmother, Nubia Archaga, took Fernanda with her overland to the U.S. border.

Archaga turned herself in to Border Patrol with Fernanda in her arms, she said in an interview, but on the third morning after they arrived, Fernanda was taken from the holding facility where they had been staying. Archaga said that she heard her grandchild weep and cry out, “mami, mami,” just a few moments later.

“I decided to bring her so that she could be in a better environment and have a better future,” Archaga said, between sobs, speaking after she was released from detention about 10 days ago. “I wanted the girl to have a better life.”

Back in Honduras, her paternal grandparents were distraught. Lazo accused Archaga of taking the child because she believed entering the United States with a young child would be easier. After calling a toll-free number publicized on Honduran television to reach the U.S. authorities, he eventually found Fernanda. But for all the notarized paperwork he had sent to the consulate and the shelter, all the times he had talked a U.S. volunteer, he still had no idea when he would see his granddaughter again.

“We just want the girl to come back to our country. We are desperate,” Lazo said. “She is so cute. I am worried she will be given up for adoption. We are suffering immensely. I don’t want her to forget us.”

In New York a few weeks later, the judge was granting Fernanda’s family’s request to have her returned to them.