"ICE has the authority to release the families in its custody today, yet the agency continues to traumatize children and parents by keeping them in detention and threatening family separation. With every passing day, they are also unnecessarily at risk of further exposure to COVID. This cannot go on,” said Mary Miller Flowers of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
Read MoreThe United States can both protect public health and ensure continued protections for the most vulnerable in our world and is in fact obligated to do so.
Read MoreWhile some countries, like the United States, are using coronavirus as an excuse to close down borders and stop the movement of vulnerable people seeking protection and safety, other countries, such as Greece, Germany, and Portugal, are taking a public health approach.
Read MoreWe created this cocktail on the occasion of our 2020 Be A Waymaker New York Benefit. It is called the Waymaker Cocktail to honor the volunteer Young Center Child Advocates who meet with unaccompanied and separated immigrant children in government custody every week and help us advocate for their rights and best interests. They help create the path to safety for immigrant children. Here’s Oscar-nominated actress and critically acclaimed author Quinn Cummings walking us through the recipe.
Read MoreDuring the next ten days, ICE will pressure parents into giving up their children’s right to liberty or giving up their children’s right to family integrity. That is not a choice—it’s coercion. And during the next ten days, more families will become ill while parents agonize over the likelihood of forced separation from their children.
Read MoreOn Tuesday, July 14, 2020, the Young Center submitted a detailed comment opposing the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security’s proposed changes to the U.S. asylum system. The proposed rule would jeopardize the safety and well-being of children by increasing barriers to their right to seek and win asylum.
Read MoreIn a joint letter from the Young Center, Save the Children Action Network (SCAN), UNICEF USA, and Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), we demanded that ICE release families in its custody and prevent further family separation.
Read More“Family Separation Is Not Over: How the Trump Administration Continues to Separate Children from Their Parents to Serve Its Political Ends,” details the work of Young Center Child Advocates to identify and reunify children forcibly separated from their parents and legal guardians before, during, and after the administration’s Zero Tolerance policy. The report shows that although Zero Tolerance was ended in the face of public backlash, family separation continues to the present day.
Read MorePlease join us for our first virtual event to support our work with unaccompanied and separated immigrant children featuring a special line-up of performers, authors, storytellers, and speakers.
Read Moreyou have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
“This was a youth-led movement, and it is an incredible victory for the nearly 700,000 immigrants whose lives would’ve been upended by the Trump administration’s irresponsible decision to end DACA. But it is also a victory for the United States. Our country is stronger because of DACA recipients, many of whom have remained on the front-lines during COVID,” said Young Center Executive Director Maria Woltjen.
Read MoreFrom day one, this administration has made the elimination of protections for immigrant children a primary goal. If finalized, the new regulations would make access to asylum virtually impossible. But seeking asylum remains a human right—a right the Young Center has repeatedly fought to protect. We will fight against these regulations and against any other policy that undermines the safety, well-being, and rights of immigrant children.
Read MoreOn Friday, June 12, 2020, Young Center Policy Analyst Miriam Abaya testified before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on how the U.S. government’s policies during COVID-19 have impacted immigrant children seeking protection at the border. In her testimony, Abaya spoke about the undeniable harm caused by the Remain in Mexico program and by the government’s decision to close the border to everyone seeking safety, including unaccompanied children. Read Abaya’s testimony below.
Read MoreThe Officer of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report on May 29, 2020 detailing inconsistencies between the agency’s official reports on family separation and the realities on the ground. The report shows that the government not only separated more children than it previously reported but did so in violation of its own guidelines. As just one example, the report shows that the government forcibly separated at least 60 asylum-seeking families who legally sought protection at a port of entry. Previously, DHS claimed to have separated only seven families at ports of entry.
Read MoreWhen she arrived at the border, authorities forcibly separated two-year-old Yesenia* from her father. Yesenia was flown across the country and placed in a shelter for children in Chicago.
Read MoreAs protests demanding justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others killed by police violence continue, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights stands in solidarity with victims and survivors of police brutality, their families, and their communities.
Read MoreThe Young Center joined 258 legal, faith-based, humanitarian, human rights, and community organizations, in sending a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and the Centers for Disease Control to strenuously object to the administration's exploitation of the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to implement indefinite, illegal, and life-threatening restrictions on humanitarian protections at the southern U.S. border.
Read MoreOn April 23rd, thousands of Young Center supporters joined us in advocating for a 16-year-old girl who came to be known as AMPV. Despite our best efforts, AMPV was taken from the shelter in the middle of the night and deported the following day. Here is an update on what's happened since then:
Read MoreIn the last week of April, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rounded up at least four unaccompanied children who were in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and put them on “ICE flights” to Honduras. This week, DHS announced plans to do the same for children from Guatemala.
Read MoreDavid* was four years old when his father came to the United States seeking help for his desperately ill child. When they arrived at the border, government officials separated David and his father under the administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy. David was taken into government custody, diagnosed with a heart defect and scheduled for open heart surgery. This is when we were appointed to his case as Child Advocate.
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