Yesterday, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights joined thousands of organizations and individuals in opposing a new government regulation that targets immigrant families and could force children into homelessness.
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Brothers Andy and Junior were separated at the United States border in October 2018. Seven-year-old Andy was transferred to a facility in New York and Junior, 21, was placed in an adult detention facility in Texas. The siblings were devastated, especially because Junior had been Andy’s primary caregiver in Honduras.
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“We are deeply disappointed that Congress could not pass a clean bill that was focused solely on the needs of vulnerable children,” said Jennifer Nagda, Policy Director at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “We hope that the public will hold DHS and Congress accountable for making sure these funds are actually used to protect immigrant children.
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Coverage of the patently dangerous conditions for children in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody has brought renewed attention to an immigration system designed for adults, where children are seen as threats—not as infants, preschoolers, grade-schoolers or teens in need of protection. Here are some concrete actions you can take to help.
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The administration has directed the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to start a mass roundup and deportation of about 2,000 immigrant families on Sunday, June 23, 2019. Here are some resources to protect yourself in the event of a potential raid.
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This winter, seven-year-old Marcos and his father arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border after a difficult journey from Guatemala. Both are members of an indigenous community and speak the Mam language. Immigration officials interviewed Marcos’s father without an interpreter, and for reasons still unclear to the Young Center, separated father and son. They deported Marcos’s father without allowing him to take his son with him.
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Ten years ago, 15-year-old May was taken from her hometown in Fuzhou, China—against her will—and brought to the United States. During her 8-month journey to the U.S.-Mexico border, May endured thirst, hunger, robbery, and sexual assault as she was handed off from stranger to stranger. When she finally reached the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration authorities identified her as an unaccompanied child and sent her to a children’s facility in Chicago.
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The Young Center’s Policy team is expanding our base of support on both sides of the aisle and increasing collaboration with other children’s rights organizations to bring urgent attention to the issues impacting unaccompanied and separated immigrant children. Here are some of the issues we’re focused on.
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Thanks to our supporters, we’ve been able to serve many more immigrant children. Our policy team has expanded to better amplify our voice. Your support has allowed us to respond not only to the family separation policy but also to the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
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My family and I fled the bloody Salvadoran Civil War, which left 75,000 people dead, in 1988…I know what it is like to have to leave your home one day and come to a new country with a different language the next.
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We hope you’ll join us in being a Waymaker and celebrating immigrant children, their resilience, and their human rights at our annual Chicago fundraiser on Wednesday, May 29, 2019.
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HSAC members released a report that not only excluded our recommendations, but contradicted our advice and ignored longstanding child protection principles.
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Each person you meet has a story. And each of you no doubt have made a remarkable journey to get here today. It’s what has made this country so extraordinary, that there’s no single story, no single narrative. It’s what makes you so extraordinary. Embrace your stories. Share them with the rest of us. We need to hear them.
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Young Center Founder and Executive Director Maria Woltjen was honored with the Global Citizenship Award for two decades of tireless work for immigrant children’s rights at the Young Center and beyond.
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How desperate were you to come this way?
Alone and ripped from family
On Friday, April 12, 2019, Miriam Abaya, Policy Associate at the Young Center for Immigrant Children Rights, provided the following testimony at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’s Public Session on Immigration Detention Centers and Treatment of Immigrants.
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Last week, the Department of Homeland Security called on Congress to effectively eliminate the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). This is another outrageous attack on immigrant children’s rights by the administration.
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Today, February 15, 2019, the President declared an utterly unnecessary and anti-child “national emergency” on our southern border. The declaration would take money from other departments, mostly from the Department of Defense’s military construction budget, on top of the almost $1.4 billion Congress authorized to build a border wall.
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Today the U.S. government will take the unprecedented and unlawful step of turning away asylum-seekers under a policy the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has shamelessly named its “Migrant Protection Protocols.”
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Yesterday, a federal watchdog agency released a report confirming what Young Center Child Advocates have reported for the last 18 months.
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