Unaccompanied Minors Quotes

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers put out a statement with these almost unprecedented words: “Certainly we are not gullible enough to believe that thousands of unaccompanied minor Central American children came to America without the encouragement, aid and assistance of the United States government.

NAME JEFF

Before the immigration crisis was declared in the summer of 2014, minors seeking immigration relief were given approximately twelve months to find a lawyer to represent their case before their first court hearing. But when the crisis was declared and Obama’s administration created the priority juvenile docket, that window was reduced to twenty-one days. In real and practical terms, what the creation of that priority docket meant was that the cases involving unaccompanied minors from Central America were grouped together and moved to the top of the list of pending cases in immigration court. Being moved to the top of a list, in this context, was the least desirable thing—at least from the point of view of the children involved. Basically, the priority juvenile docket implied that deportation proceedings against them were accelerated by 94 percent, and that both they and the organizations that normally provided legal representation now had much less time to build a defense.

Unavoidably, the Rio Grande became ground zero for political posturing, attracting the conservative firebrand Sean Hannity, who taped his Fox News show on the banks of the river. Republicans including Rick Perry, the Texas governor, blamed the “border crisis” on DACA, the program that gives temporary legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. But as congressional Democrats and the Obama administration pointed out, the unaccompanied minors did not qualify for DACA. What they did quality for, according to human rights experts, was refugee status—something President Obama was careful not to give them. The politics of immigration was so poisonous even helpless kids couldn’t be seen as kids. When Hillary Clinton, a longtime champion of children’s rights, was asked to weigh in, she said tens of thousands of children and teenagers should be sent back to their home countries. “We have to send a clear message: just because your child gets across the border doesn’t mean your child gets to stay,” Clinton said at a CNN-hosted town hall.

An unaccompanied minor refers to a young passenger between the age of five to eleven years old who is travelling without an adult. They are allocated a UNMR special service request code.

The consequences of Obama’s illegal amnesty became plain in 2013 and 2014, when we saw the numbers of unaccompanied minors crossing the border skyrocket. In 2011, roughly 6,000 unaccompanied children crossed the border. By 2014, that number had risen to 90,000. And by 2015 it is estimated to rise to 145,000.

Chavez was the same Border Patrol official who, in December, had inadvertently admitted to an Office of Refugee Resettlement staffer the Border Patrol had been working on scaling up family separations. Now, she had written Commander White with a request. Chavez wished to better understand the release of unaccompanied minors in the custody of his department. Children who were separated would be rendered “unaccompanied,” despite the fact they didn’t arrive as such.

Molly pointed a finger at each passenger and counted out loud while making a personal inventory in her head. Ira and Ruth, the old couple. Bernadette, nurse. Jasmine, life vest woman. Andy, blue polo asshole. Will, smart guy. Shannon, smart kid. Ryan, newlywed widow. Maia, unaccompanied minor. Plus, what was left of the crew: Kit, Kaholo, herself.