The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed suit on behalf of the 1000s of refugee children being held in detention centers in the southwest.
The ACLU suit claims that the children should have legal representation when they go through their deportation proceedings.
I have witnessed several immigration hearings for people with and without lawyers. Setting aside anxiety and potential Spanish/English/indigenous language barriers, judges and lawyers have their own lingo and their own rules. Even adult non-lawyers can get tripped up by the legal system. These deportation hearings are literally a life or death matter for the refugee children. There is a fine line between being label a refugee who is fleeing violence and persecution in her homeland (OK, you can stay) or a migrant who broke US law and crossed the border (Hasta luego).
Providing them with lawyers is the humanitarian thing to do to. I also believe that the government should make every effort to hook up these minors with relatives who are in the US. (I have this to say to the people who claim the US can’t afford to care for these children and treat them humanely: TAX THE RICH.)
From the ACLU..
Eleven-year-old Luisa was too young to apply on her own for a visa to come from Guatemala to the United States where she hoped to be reunited with her mother. But since federal immigration authorities detained her last year in Texas, Luisa has learned that she is apparently not too young to act as her own lawyer as federal immigration officials move to deport her back to her native Guatemala.
During a recent hearing in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Luisa and more than two dozen other children crowded into a small room where the U.S. government has begun deportation hearings against them. Some sat quietly, feet dangling from benches. Others, who spoke indigenous languages and understood little Spanish, looked nervously around struggling to understand the proceedings.
