A MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
June 2023
For the last three years, I have witnessed the undeniable sense of despair and fear children and families face along the U.S.-Mexico border. Since my last visit to the border in November 2022, Title 42—a policy used by the former administration to rapidly expel families and adult asylum-seekers to Mexico—has been expanded. The administration has also introduced a host of border enforcement measures that have kept children and families in danger, fueled family separation, and denied people their right to seek safety in the U.S. Policies and practices that separate families have never been—and never will be—acceptable. They were unacceptable in 2018 at the height of the past administration’s cruel and inhumane family separation policy, which resulted in over 5,000 separations, and they remain unacceptable now.
As an immigrant children’s rights organization, the Young Center fights on behalf of every child and every family harmed by policies and practices that deny their rights, fuel family separation, and jeopardize their safety. Today, as nearly 1,000 children remain separated because of the 2018 Zero Tolerance policy, and new border enforcement measures put the lives of children in danger, I ask myself: When will our government take full responsibility for past violations of human rights and end policies that continue these violations today? When are we finally going to say, “Never again!”?
It is often challenging to measure progress when you’re working towards transforming our country’s broken immigration system. However, despite continued attacks against immigrant communities, 2022 was also a year when we took meaningful steps in protecting the rights, safety, and well-being of all children.
Over the course of the year, the Young Center celebrated the introduction of a landmark congressional bill–the Children’s Safe Welcome Act. This bill aims to expand the protections for unaccompanied children and reflects years of advocacy by the Young Center to influence members of Congress to accept our organization’s recommendations and expertise.
In the fall of 2022, we launched a new program. The Technical Assistance Program offers culturally sensitive and trauma-informed case consultations and training to professionals and court advocates who serve the growing number of immigrant children caught between the federal immigration system and state court systems. Additionally, in June 2022, we formally welcomed the very first cohort of Elizabeth Frankel Fellows.
All of this progress took place alongside the critical work of our Child Advocate Program, through which we served more than 1,600 unaccompanied children from 45 different countries with the support of nearly 400 volunteers. The fight for justice on behalf of immigrant children and youth is far from over. At the Young Center, we will not waver in our commitment to defend and advocate for their rights and best interests. All children belong with their families and deserve to live safe and thriving lives. That is the world for which we stand. With you in our corner, we can continue to carry forward this urgent work.
With Gratitude,
Gladis Molina Alt
Executive Director
2022 BY THE NUMBERS
With your support in 2022, we served 1,643 children from 45 different nationalities facing deportation across 19 states. 432 of the children we worked with were under 12-years-old and 459 were at risk of being transfered to adult detention.
OUR IMPACT STORIES*
AZIZ’S STORY
After being evacuated from a war zone, Aziz stepped off a plane and onto U.S. soil with no birth certificate or government-issued identification and no belongings, asking: “Where am I? What country is this? Where is my family?”
But no one in the entire U.S. immigration system knew what to do with Aziz when he and other unaccompanied children from Afghanistan first arrived. As a result, Aziz was sent to a government facility for unaccompanied children where facility staff didn’t speak his language or understand his religious, dietary, or health needs. Aziz stopped attempting to communicate. When he eventually learned that his entire immediate family had been killed while waiting to evacuate, he suffered tremendously and required increased support.
When the federal government reached out for help with Afghan children, CAP immediately recruited and trained more than fifty volunteers who speak Dari, Pashto, and Farsi. Not long after his arrival, we appointed a Child Advocate to Aziz. At first, he refused to meet with them. But our Child Advocate continued to show up, week after week, month after month, just in case Aziz changed his
mind.
When Aziz finally determined that his Child Advocate was truly there to help him, he began to share his story. CAP found a specialized treatment center and an interpreter to help Aziz begin addressing his trauma and advocated for him to be enrolled in a local school. After a long search, CAP also discovered Aziz had an aunt in Afghanistan who was still trying to emigrate.
We won’t quit until we reunite Aziz with his sole, remaining family member. With only one flight per week out of Afghanistan and no mechanism in the U.S. to approve his aunt’s arrival, we continue to support Aziz until he can be reunited with her.
MARIA AND ANA’S STORY
Maria was nine years old when she and her sister Ana were separated from their mother pursuant to the Trump Administration’s family separation policy. Despite fleeing violence in their home country, their mother was deported, and the sisters were placed in a federal foster care program.
With the creation of the Family Reunification Task Force and its efforts to reunify separated families, Paola was able to return to the U.S. to reunify with her children in the summer of 2022. She quickly reunited with her eldest daughter, Ana, but she has been unable to reunify with Maria, who remains in the custody of the foster care program, apart from the rest of her family.
Through its partnership with Seneca Family of Agencies, TAP has collaborated on efforts to support this family’s reunification. After learning about the delays in reunification stemming from complex state court proceedings, TAP identified counsel at King & Spaulding LLP, who were eager to support the family and provide pro bono legal representation to Paola in her fight to reunify with her daughter. TAP collaborated with the King & Spaulding attorneys as they worked to reunite Maria and Paola, and just recently, they were successful in persuading the state court to order the reunification of the mother and daughter—more than five years after their initial separation.
*Children’s names have been changed to protect their privacy.
2022 PROGRAM ACHIEVEMENTS
CHILD ADVOCACY PROGRAM
Our Child Advocate Program (CAP) provides independent Child Advocates—similar to guardians ad litem in state courts—to unaccompanied immigrant children in federal detention. We serve survivors of persecution, trafficking, abuse, and other crimes; particularly young children; pregnant and parenting youth; children and youth with complex medical conditions or disabilities; children at risk of turning 18 while in government custody; and other particularly vulnerable youth. Our Child Advocates accompany children while they remain in detention, separated from their families, and as they face immigration proceedings.
Throughout 2022, CAP staff worked to address the gaps in services for Afghan children in federal detention. More than one year after Afghan children arrived in the U.S., many remain in restrictive settings and face challenges that have taken a significant toll on their health and well-being, such as an inability to communicate with family and limited access to linguistically and culturally responsive services. We worked extensively to educate stakeholders and policymakers about the unmet needs of detained Afghan youth. Additionally, through our Safe Repatriation Program, we provided decision-makers with fact-based information about the child’s safety, culture, and family before a decision is made about repatriation. Our Child Advocates incorporate information from international home studies, safety assessments, and external consultants into our oral and written Best Interests Determinations (BIDs), which are grounded in our Child’s Rights Paradigm. We submit BIDs to stakeholders who make decisions, including about placement and repatriation, that directly impact the child’s safety and well-being. Our work supports children who wish to return to their home countries and those at risk of deportation to dangerous conditions.
POLICY PROGRAM
The Young Center’s policy team worked on a wide range of issues impacting children in 2022.
We expanded our work with federal agencies and Congress.
We partnered with Indigenous community leaders at Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim to develop recommendations for providing resources and supportive services to families separated under the Zero Tolerance
policy.
More than 40 organizations joined our call to fund housing, medical care, language access, and legal, mental health, and social services for families whose rights were violated.
Our first cohort of Elizabeth Frankel Fellows helped submit a comment condemning the United States’ ongoing violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Our comment demonstrated how U.S. immigration policy has a disproportionately harmful impact on children—particularly Black, Indigenous, and Latinx children.
Fourteen members of Congress introduced the Children’s Safe Welcome Act, a landmark bill that would ensure the federal government prioritizes the safety and well-being of each child navigating our country’s immigration system. Young Center staff played a critical role in this bill’s evolution over the last three years and persuaded its authors to take a comprehensive and child-centered approach to the legislation.
We won increasing support from federal agencies to end the practice of separating all children who arrive at the border with trusted family members, and we are now leading a coalition of organizations working with government officials to design a new procedure for reunifying some families at the border.
We published two new reports. In August, we published “Preserving Family Ties: Ensuring Children’s Contact with Family While in Government Custody,” which addresses the longstanding issue of the federal government restricting unaccompanied children’s contact with their family while in custody. In September 2022, along with the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), we issued a report demonstrating how ORR’s reliance on “Significant Incident Reports” (SIRs) negatively impacts the well-being of children in custody titled “Punishing Trauma: Incident Reporting and Immigrant Children.”
We submitted comments to the Department of Justice (DOJ) urging the agency to create a child-specific court manual for judges.
We were featured on multiple panels on the intersection of disability and immigration, including an event organized by the Center for American Progress on Understanding the Rights of Disabled Asylum-Seekers.
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAM
In 2022, we formally launched our third and newest program – the Technical Assistance Program (TAP). With the creation of TAP, we expanded the reach of our mission into new systems immigrant children may encounter, such as the state child welfare and juvenile justice systems. These systems, while flawed across the board, especially fail immigrant children and their families. The immigrant child taken into foster care when a parent is deported or when a caregiver harms them. The adolescent youth whose minor run-in with the law could now have lasting consequences for their ability to stay in the United States. These children, and their families, face uniquely complex circumstances that require intersectional and creative advocacy.
TAP was created to address these complexities by offering culturally sensitive and trauma informed consultations, mentorship, trainings, and resources directly to the professionals working with immigrant children in state court systems. We have seen how gaps in understanding and limited resources create barriers in immigrant children’s equitable access to family unity, cultural connection and language, well-being, and permanency. By bridging these gaps and supporting connections to resources, TAP’s collaboration with state court stakeholders can have a profound and lasting impact on a child’s well-being.
WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR VOLUNTEERS
CAP recruits, screens, trains, and supports culturally sensitive bilingual volunteers, including teachers, college students, retired attorneys, and community members to serve as Child Advocates. Volunteers meet weekly with the children to build trusting relationships and learn their stories and wishes. Our work is possible because of the generous support of volunteer Child Advocates around the country who donate thousands of hours to accompanying children as they face immigration proceedings. We are grateful to each and every volunteer.
“Our world is undeniably plagued by many ills, and it can be paralyzing to think about how one could ever change anything for the better. But there are ways one can make a difference in immigrant children’s lives and their possibilities to survive and thrive.”
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: “The Return” by Belle Yang. See more of Belle’s work here.