LETTER FROM FOUNDER MARIA WOLTJEN
June 2021
As I write this letter, I’m a few weeks away from retiring from the Young Center after 18 years. In Spanish, it is Jubilación—celebratory, and a decision of affirmation. The Young Center is stronger than ever, both organizationally, and with fierce, spirited, and brilliant staff in each of our offices. I’m proud of what we’ve built together.
Gladis Molina Alt is the next Executive Director. Gladis is known across the country for her passion and commitment to immigrant children. Gladis was born in El Salvador during the civil war in the 1980s. She was brought to the United States at the age of 10, and her experience as an undocumented immigrant child and young adult inspired her career. I’m confident she will bring her strength and brilliance to improve the systems faced by immigrant children.
This was a difficult year for so many reasons. We lost an icon in our community. Elizabeth Frankel, our Associate Director, died after a gutsy battle with cancer. Liz was the heart of the Young Center. Brilliant. Kind. Quietly tenacious. She loved working on the most impossible cases. Our staff will carry on Liz’s legacy, in every individual case, every brief we write, every time we meet with a child. In the fall of 2021, we will launch the Elizabeth Frankel Fellowship Program, providing fellowships to three law students each year. The fellows will honor Liz’s legacy.
In this year of the pandemic, our staff met the challenges creatively, finding new ways to engage children, learn their stories, and fight on their behalf. Under cover of the pandemic, the prior administration deported thousands of children as soon as they arrived, without asking where their parents were, whether they had an adult to return to, whether they would be safe. These kids were turned away in violation of the anti-trafficking law and no doubt many were returned to the very danger they were fleeing.
Today, thousands of children are arriving at the border. The government is struggling to provide appropriate care, and dealing with the lack of sufficient placements, a result of the prior administration’s deportation policies and dismantling of the shelter system for immigrant children. There is hope. The new administration, including White House officials and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), ask the Young Center for ideas and advice. They are working to right the ship.
In October 2020, the Young Center released its report “Reimagining Children’s Immigration Proceedings: A Roadmap for an Entirely New System Centered Around Children.” A reimagined system would welcome children. At the border, U.S. officials would never again separate children from their families, whether they be parents, grandparents, aunts, or older siblings. Once here, children would encounter a system that recognizes their vulnerabilities and shields them from adversarial proceedings. And, before immigration judges could order children deported, the U.S. government would have to prove that each child would be safe upon return, a novel change that would turn the current system upside down. With the new administration in place, the Young Center can work toward establishing this reimagined system as the new reality for immigrant children facing deportation.
It’s an exciting time for the Young Center. We have a new Executive Director who brings her personal experience to her leadership. The Young Center is strong and in excellent financial health. We look forward to working with the new administration and pressing for meaningful, forward-looking change.
Maria Woltjen
Founder and Executive Director
2021 By the Numbers
With your support, in 2020, we served 1,213 children facing deportation across the country. To advocate for the best interests—the child’s wishes, safety, and well-being—of these children, we submitted 714 Best Interests Determinations (BIDs) to stakeholders including immigration judges, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), attorneys of record or legal services providers, ORR, state courts, and other service providers such as medical or mental healthcare organizations. Of the BIDs we submitted, 20% are pending. Of the remaining BIDs, more than 85% were accepted by immigration officials.
We continue to find creative ways to fight. In our BIDs in 2020, we advocated for children to be reunited with their families and gain permanency and protection from deportation. We fought for them to be placed in family or community homes instead of large facilities and shelters and got them released from custody instead of being transferred to adult immigration detention. For children whose safety, wishes, and best interests depended on returning to their home countries, we advocated for their safe and timely repatriation during the global pandemic.
OUR IMPACT*
Ricardo, 2, and Roseline, 4, arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border after a harrowing journey through the Darien Gap, where their mother and older sibling disappeared. The Darien Gap is a dangerous stretch of jungle between Columbia and Panama that many migrants travel by foot. In Panama, Ricardo and Roseline were apprehended by immigration officials, and their grandmother and uncle from the United States traveled there to bring them home. At the U.S.-Mexico border, the children were turned away four times under the Trump administration’s anti-child policies even though their family members were accompanying them and eager to welcome them. In collaboration with the family’s attorney, we advocated with border officials, used social media, and mobilized allies on the Hill to ensure the children were allowed into the country on their fifth try, but they were separated from their family. We also successfully advocated for them to be reunited with their grandma and uncle.
Miguel, 17, came to the United States to escape violence and threats from a local gang in his community in Honduras. Like many unaccompanied children, he faced being transferred to ICE adult detention on his 18th birthday. After building rapport with Miguel, the Young Center was able to identify some of his family members in the country. With only two months left before he´d be transferred to adult immigration detention, we secured his release to his family and found a pro bono lawyer to represent him.
*Children’s names have been changed to protect their privacy.
Program Updates
Children seeking protection in the United States are fleeing abuse, violence, persecution, extreme poverty, and trafficking. Many have traveled hundreds, if not thousands, of miles by themselves, facing further threats, violence, and trauma during their journeys. Young Center Child Advocates are appointed to the most vulnerable children, including children forcibly separated from their loved ones at the border, children with mental or physical disabilities, teens who are pregnant or parenting, children who have survived human trafficking, infants and toddlers who are not able to voice their wishes, teens who are 17 years old and therefore exposed to the risk of adult immigration detention on their 18th birthday, and children who have witnessed or experienced severe violence. As Child Advocates, Young Center staff fight for the best interests of children facing deportation, ensuring their voices are heard and their rights are protected.
Our volunteer Child Advocates meet with children in government custody every week to accompany them throughout immigration proceedings and help Young Center attorneys, social workers, and case support specialists protect children’s best interests. In 2020, 304 volunteers were appointed as Child Advocate for 413 children. They contributed more than 4,420 hours of their time accompanying the children and advocating for their best interests.
Policy Updates
The Young Center zealously advocates with Congress, federal agencies, and the courts to protect the rights and best interests of immigrant children. In 2020, the country faced a final and significant deluge of anti-child, anti-immigrant policies issued by the outgoing administration.
With your support, we grew our team and engaged in record advocacy. We issued comments objecting to nine Trump-era regulations, laying out steps needed to undo each policy. We submitted new declarations in federal court, filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, and submitted testimony with international bodies to stop the practice of trapping families in Mexico and locking children in hotels before expelling them to danger.
In our advocacy with Congress, we took a leap forward in bridging the gap between policies for immigrant youth and other children in government custody, securing federal commitments to decrease the size of federal shelters for migrant children, and worked with Congressional offices to protect children’s right to be with family.
We issued multiple reports and increased partnerships with advocates in other fields including disability rights, child welfare, and juvenile justice, to advance our vision for fundamental reform of immigration policy.
The Young Center’s work for unaccompanied and separated immigrant children is made possible largely by the contributions of tens of thousands of passionate supporters. Thank you for supporting us in this urgent work.
Report cover: “Tadpoles” by Belle Yang. Artist-author Belle Yang makes her home in Carmel, California with her mother Laning. Her father Joseph, who walked out of war-torn China as a young man and is the hero of much of her work, died in 2019. Her website is belleyang.com, and her art is represented by Hauk Fine Arts in Pacific Grove, California (haukfinearts.com). Amy Tan writes that Belle Yang has “created a world we can lose ourselves in.” Maxine Hong Kingston calls her “our Isaac Bashevis Singer and Marc Chagall.” Gifted as an artist and writer, she has written and illustrated two highly praised literary works, “Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders” and “The Odyssey of a Manchurian.” She followed with the powerful graphic novel “Forget Sorrow.” She is also the author-artist of a dozen children’s books, including an autobiographical immigrant story told from a child’s point of view, “My Name Is Hannah,” from which “Tadpoles” originates.