“The court’s decision today is a resounding victory for immigrant children and a relief to those of us who fight for their rights and safety.”
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“Voting in record-breaking numbers, Americans have chosen a new administration. Together, we now face the hard work of ending policies that harm children and—as importantly—building a new system centered on the needs and rights of children,” Young Center Executive Director Maria Woltjen said in a statement.
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The next administration must quickly outline its commitment to protecting the safety and well-being of immigrant children. As a coalition of organizations dedicated to children’s rights, safety, health and development, we recommend immediate action on the following issues. We also call on the next administration to mandate that government actors consider the best interests of the child-including their expressed wishes, safety, family integrity, liberty, development, and identity-and support legislation to create such a mandate in federal law.
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On Wednesday, October 28, 2020, the Young Center launched our latest initiative and report “Reimagining Children’s Immigration Proceedings: A Roadmap for an Entirely New System Centered around Children” in an event featuring Young Center Executive Director Maria Woltjen, Child Advocate Program Director Gladis Molina Alt, Policy Director Jennifer Nagda, Advocate for Children and Youth Elvis Garcia Callejas, and Tara Magner from the Chicago Commitment for the MacArthur Foundation.
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Today, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights released “Reimagining Children’s Immigration Proceedings: A Roadmap for an Entirely New System Centered around Children.” With the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the report sets out to reimagine the ways in which the federal government welcomes children at the border and adjudicates their requests to remain permanently in the United States.
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The proposed rule threatens the due process rights of children seeking asylum and undermines their ability to seek asylum protections by requiring immigration judges to adjudicate asylum cases in a limited timeframe, with little discretion to grant continuances, and allowing judges to exclude country conditions evidence from non-government sources, which many children introduce to support their claims for asylum.
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“Tuesday’s report about the 545 children who remain separated from their parents is one more reminder of this administration’s cruelty to children. The fight for immigrant children's rights and to end family separation is not over. Please join us in demanding that families belong together,” Young Center Executive Director Maria Woltjen said in a statement.
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As more reports unearth the cruelty of the Trump administration's family separation policy, many of you have asked how you can help. Thank you! Here are four ways.
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The proposed rule, if implemented, would significantly infringe upon the privacy rights of children and their family members, subjecting them to unlawful and unnecessary surveillance.
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For more than three years, the administration has systematically and ruthlessly targeted children seeking protection at our borders while repeatedly violating laws enacted by bipartisan governments to protect the most vulnerable migrants. Locking children in hotels so that they could be returned to their countries without a single question about their safety is just the latest example of the government’s callous disregard for children’s safety.
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For decades, people fleeing persecution had a fighting chance to find a haven in this country. For many—especially children—asylum has meant the difference between life and death. Today, we are on the cusp of losing our asylum system in its entirety as the Trump administration proposes rule after rule designed to decimate it.
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By arbitrarily limiting the time in which children can share their stories, find counsel, develop cases, and pursue appeals, this purposed rule flies in the face of the science and the facts of children’s development, and is an assault on children’s due process rights and antithetical to consideration of their best interests.
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Despite being one of the fastest growing groups in the United States, the voices and stories of African immigrants are often silenced and sidelined in the discussion about immigration. We held this event to address the issues facing Black and African immigrant families and children served by each of our organizations and tp equip our supporters with information about how they can take action.
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On Friday, September 4, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to end its practice of detaining immigrant children in hotel rooms by September 15. However, rather than complying with the judge’s order, DHS is fighting to be able to keep children hidden in hotels, supervised by adults they don’t know, with no access to lawyers, Child Advocates, or child welfare experts. Here is how we’re fighting back.
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In a victory for children’s rights, a federal judge ruled last Friday that DHS violated federal law when it apprehended migrant children at the border and detained them in hotels before sending them back to the very danger the children fled weeks or months earlier.
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On Friday, August 28, 2020, the National Association of Counsel for Children (NACC) awarded the Young Center their President’s Award, which “recognizes excellence in advocacy organizations working to advance the legal rights of children and families.” Watch the award ceremony.
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At this webinar, front-line advocates from the Young Center and our partner organization Justice in Motion discussed how we’ve changed our work to facilitate children’s safe return during a global pandemic and why it is more important than ever that children's best interests are considered in every decision.
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"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.
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The 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.
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While 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.
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