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Presentation
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HXY0Vcm-B-PMXBDC1PwGoZ66OyoKvGeWOImvBd08Peo/edit?ts=59e952fe#slide=id.g25cf3fa2e3_0_25

Handout
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LzB9h11M9pVIp36mDY-R4j92aYWDX5r_A6lgcZf9lqU/edit?ts=59e95880

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"During the first part, you and your group will visit one of the Refugee Resettlement Programs or assigned Ethnic Community Based Organization (ECBOs) in Phoenix. You will make an appointment with the Program Director, Community Leader or a designated person. The main goal of your visit will be to learn more about the program, refugee populations it servers, and services which are provided. You and your group will need to focus on assessment of the needs of newly arrived refugees. Your goal will be to design and implement a short volunteer project (no more than 10 hours) based on mutually agreed tasks as suggested by person you meet with. Your project needs to be negotiated, approved, and supervised by the assigned agency representative.

The second part of this assignment - becoming an expert is based on the problem based learning and requires you and your group to work collectively to research a problem within the refugee communities and develop an expertise in an area for which you are doing your volunteer project. Most likely the problems will be related to one of the following areas: refugee children, refugee/immigrant/welfare, refugee/immigrant families: women and elders, refugee/immigrant health/mental health, services for refugees/immigrants, and acculturation/assimilation process among refugees/immigrants. Dr. kovacevic will assume a role of coach/mentor, and will guide each group in the process of researching an assigned problem."

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Janessa Jones

Administrative Assistant

Office of Philanthropy

O: 602.650.4840
JaJones@cc-az.org

Clairette Clinger
Program Manager

Unaccompanied Minor Program

O: 602.944.1819 ext 51811
CClinger@cc-az.org

Patricia Gillem
Volunteer Coordinator
O: 602.749.4442
PGillem@cc-az.org

CC's Office Addresses:
4747 N 7th Ave

Phoenix, AZ 85013
and
1825 W Northern Ave

Phoenix, AZ 85021

Volunteering Address:
615 W Pierson St
Property is south of Camelback Rd and east of 7th Ave, behind the main 3-story building.  Turn east onto Pierson, and park to your right (south?).

Refuge Cafe
www.TheRefugeCafe.com

Additional Contact from Dr. Zlata:
Judy Alvidrez
4727 N 7th Ave
Phoenix, AZ 85013
jalvidrez@cc-az.org
Organizing a Field Day, Soccer Game 11/18

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Interactive Map: Fifty Most Populous Refugee Camps (2013)

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Interactive Map: Fifty Most Populous Refugee Camps (2013)

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees administers camps sheltering a vast population of displaced people. In 2013, these largest camps together housed nearly two million people.

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Fifty Most Populous Refugee Camps (2013)

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees administers camps sheltering a vast population of displaced people. These largest camps together house nearly two million people.

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Interactive Map: Inside the World's 10 Largest Refugee Camps (2016)

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Interactive Map: Inside the World's 10 Largest Refugee Camps (2016)

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UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency

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Around the world, nearly four million refugees reside in planned or self-settled camps. This Story Map explores the ten largest settlements.

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Central America’s Violent Northern Triangle

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Central America’s Violent Northern Triangle

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Introduction

Tens of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans, many of them unaccompanied minors, have arrived in the United States in recent years, seeking asylum from the region's skyrocketing violence. Their countries, which form a region known as the Northern Triangle, were rocked by civil wars in the 1980s, leaving a legacy of violence and fragile institutions.

The region remains menaced by corruption, drug trafficking, and gang violence despite tough police and judicial reforms. While the United States has provided the three governments billions of dollars in aid over the past decade, some analysts believe U.S. immigration policies have exacerbated threats to regional security.

How many people have left the Northern Triangle in recent years?

The number of asylum seekers worldwide originating from the Northern Triangle reached 110,000 in 2015, a five-fold increase from 2012. Unaccompanied minors accounted for much of this surge [PDF]. Migrants from all three countries cite violence, forced gang recruitment, and extortion, as well as poverty and lack of opportunity, as their reasons for leaving. While Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama have reported a sharp increase in flows from the Northern Triangle since 2008, most migrants are passing through to settle in the United States. In 2015, the latest year for which data is available, as many as 3.4 million people born in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were living in the United States, more than double the estimated 1.5 million people in 2000. About 55 percent of them were undocumented.

Why are so many people fleeing the Northern Triangle?

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras consistently rank among the most violent countries in the world. El Salvador became the world's most violent country not at war in 2015, when gang-related violence brought its homicide rate to 103 per hundred thousand. It has since fallen by one third. Nevertheless, all three countries have significantly higher homicide rates than neighboring Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama.

Extortion is also rampant. A 2015 investigation by Honduran newspaper found that Salvadorans and Hondurans pay an estimated $390 million, $200 million, and $61 million, respectively, in annual extortion fees to organized crime groups. Extortionists primarily target public transportation operators, small businesses, and residents of poor neighborhoods, according to the report, and attacks on people who do not pay contribute to the violence.

What causes the violence?

The nature of the violence is distinct in each country, but the proliferation of gangs, narcotics trafficking, weak rule of law, and official corruption are common threads.

Organized crime is a legacy of decades of war in the region, notes a CFR special report. In El Salvador, fighting between the military-led government and leftist guerrilla groups (1979-92) left as many as seventy-five thousand dead, and Guatemala's civil war (1960-96) killed as many as two hundred thousand civilians. Honduras did not have a civil war of its own, but nonetheless felt the effects of nearby conflicts; it served as a staging ground for the U.S.-backed Contras, a right-wing rebel group fighting Nicaragua's Sandinista government during the 1980s.

At war's end, a large pool of demobilized and unemployed men with easy access to weapons morphed into organized criminal groups, most notably in El Salvador. In Guatemala, groups known as illegal clandestine security apparatuses and clandestine security apparatuses grew out of state intelligence and military forces.

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras consistently rank among the most violent countries in the world.

Criminal groups in the Northern Triangle include transnational criminal organizations, many of which are associated with Mexican drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs); domestic organized-crime groups; transnational gangs, or maras, such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the Eighteenth Street Gang (M-18); and pandillas, or street gangs.

MS-13 and M-18, the region's largest gangs, are estimated to have as many as eighty-five thousand members [PDF] in total. Both were formed in Los Angeles: M-18 in the 1960s by Mexican youth, and MS-13 in the 1980s by Salvadorans who had fled the civil war. Their presence in Central America grew in the mid-1990s following large-scale deportations from the United States of undocumented immigrants with criminal records. The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates there are ten thousand MS-13 members in the United States.

Drug trafficking adds to the violence. U.S.-led interdiction efforts in Colombia, Mexico, and the Caribbean have pushed trafficking routes into Central America, and U.S. officials report that 90 percent of documented cocaine flows into the United States now pass through the region. DTOs sometimes partner with maras to transport and distribute narcotics, sparking turf wars. In addition to the drug trade and extortion, criminal groups in the region also profit from kidnapping for ransom and human trafficking and smuggling.

Why has violence persisted?

Weak, underfunded institutions, combined with corruption, have undermined efforts to address gang violence and extortion. Tax revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in the Northern Triangle are among the lowest in Latin America, exacerbating inequality and straining public services. Transparency International, a global anticorruption watchdog, places all three countries in the bottom half of its corruption perceptions rankings. Honduran institutions remain particularly shaky following a 2009 coup-Latin America's first in nearly two decades-and a contested presidential election in 2017.

As many as 95 percent of crimes go unpunished [PDF] in some areas, and the public has little trust in the police and security forces. (The police and military were accused of widespread human rights abuses during El Salvador's and Guatemala's civil wars.) "There has been so much penetration of the state and so much criminal involvement in security forces, it makes it difficult to think about how they would [reform] without some outside intervention," says Eric Olson, an expert on the region at the Wilson Center.

How have Northern Triangle countries tried to stop the violence?

In the early 2000s, Northern Triangle governments enacted a series of mano dura, or "heavy hand," policies that expanded police powers and enacted harsher punishments for gang members. Around the same time, military personnel were deployed [PDF] to carry out police functions.

Though popular [PDF], these policies in most cases failed to reduce crime and could have indirectly led to a growth in gang membership. Mass incarcerations increased the burden on already overcrowded prisons, where gangs, which effectively run many of them, recruited thousands of new members. The U.S. State Department, human rights groups, and journalists have raised concerns about these policies, denouncing prison conditions and police violence against civilians.

In 2012, Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes's administration helped broker a truce between the MS-13 and M-18 gangs. Homicides fell by more than 40 percent that year. Despite the reduction in violence between the gangs, crimes against civilians, such as extortion, continued unabated, and when the peace deal unraveled in 2014, killings more than doubled. The government of Funes's successor, President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, granted authorities the right to use force " without any fear of suffering consequences," leading police to kill eight times as many gang members in 2015 as in 2013. In 2016, these mano dura tactics were given congressional backing with the creation of elite police units with extraordinary leeway to conduct searches and seizures and invoke the military. While El Salvador's homicide rate has since declined by nearly 25 percent, it remains eleven times higher than that of the United States.

Weak, underfunded institutions, combined with corruption, have undermined efforts to address gang violence.

Guatemala saw major gains thanks in part to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an independent body created by the United Nations in 2007 to investigate and prosecute criminal groups believed to have infiltrated state institutions. Between 2009 and 2012, impunity levels fell [PDF] from 95 percent to 72 percent, according to CICIG, and in 2015 the tribunal worked with Guatemala's attorney general on an investigation into a customs corruption scheme that led to the ouster and arrest of President Otto Perez Molina. In a sign of disillusionment with Guatemala's political class, voters in 2015 elected Jimmy Morales, a comedian with no prior political experience, to the presidency. Two years later, Morales found himself mired in scandal after failing to account for more than $800,000 in campaign financing and attempting to oust the head of the CICIG. While the body remains active, the government has instructed it to "refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of the country."

In Honduras, allegations that members of the ruling National Party embezzled social security funds led protesters to call for the ouster of President Juan Orlando Hernandez in 2015. In response, the Organization of American States established the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), a body similar to CICIG that seeks to prevent corruption, reform the criminal justice and electoral systems, and improve public safety. The anticorruption body's authority was called into question following alleged fraud in Hernandez' 2017 reelection, prompting several members of MACCIH to resign.

How has the United States responded?

Recent U.S. administrations have responded to violence in Northern Triangle countries in different ways. President George W. Bush focused on fostering the region's growth and stability by increasing trade and introducing free-market reforms. Through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, his administration awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. In 2005, rising crime rates in Central America and Mexico led to a surge of migrants coming to the United States. In response, the Bush administration adopted Operation Streamline, a "zero-tolerance policy" under which migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border were criminally prosecuted and deported. In its last year, the Bush administration introduced a security assistance package for the region known as the Merida Initiative.

President Barack Obama separated Mexico from the Merida grouping and rebranded it the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). Over the years, the United States has provided more than $1 billion in aid through CARSI to help the region's law enforcement, counternarcotics, and justice systems. Midway through his second term, Obama recast U.S. strategy for Central America, forging what was intended to be a more holistic interagency approach. This strategy had three objectives [PDF]: promoting prosperity and regional integration, strengthening governance, and improving security.

Obama's strategy was designed to mesh with the so-called Alliance for Prosperity (A4P), a multiyear, multi-billion dollar effort [PDF] by Northern Triangle governments and the Inter-American Development Bank to promote commerce and security in response to the 2014 influx of unaccompanied minors into the United States. In 2016, amid a rush of arrivals from Central America, Obama ordered the rounding up and deportation of recently arrived migrants whose asylum claims had been denied. The administration said its aim was to deter would-be migrants.

President Donald J. Trump has adopted some of his predecessor's approach to the region- continuing A4P, for instance-but has taken a much harder line on immigration policies, including those that affect Central Americans. Within the next few years, nearly 350,000 immigrants from Northern Triangle countries will lose the legal right to live and work in the United States as a result of Trump revoking their temporary protected status (TPS), a designation granted to immigrants from countries that have suffered severe hardships. Trump is also expanding construction of the wall along the U.S. southwestern border, and his administration has implemented many policies intended to deter migrants from seeking asylum or illegally crossing the border, including criminally prosecuting all undocumented entrants and separating migrant parents from their minor children. The Trump administration separated some two thousand children from their parents before ending the practice in June, following international outcry. Analysts say that anti-immigration rhetoric and increased border security contributed to a 26 percent decrease [PDF] in attempted border crossings in fiscal year 2017; 54 percent of apprehended migrants originated from the Northern Triangle.

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Central America's Violent Northern Triangle

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Tens of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans, many of them unaccompanied minors, have arrived in the United States in recent years, seeking asylum from the region's skyrocketing violence. Their countries, which form a region known as the Northern Triangle, were rocked by civil wars in the 1980s, leaving a legacy of violence and fragile institutions.

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November 2016

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With a murder every one and a half hours, El Salvador is counted among the world's most dangerous nations. Awash with weapons and torn apart by the internecine struggles of rival criminal gangs, the country is experiencing violence at levels unseen since the aftermath of its long and brutal civil war.

While the state struggles to find an effective law enforcement and judicial solution to the problem - the Salvadoran authorities have tried the iron fist of military force, prosecuting gangs into oblivion and even, briefly and unsuccessfully, negotiation - things have become so bad that others have started taking matters into their own hands by forming vigilante groups and tracking down and murdering gang members who are threatening their community

In this first episode of Latin America Investigates, an uncompromising and compelling new series in which we team up with some of the continent's best investigative journalists, reporter Bryan Avelar and filmmaker Lali Houghton travel to the western province of San Miguel to find out more.

There the notorious MS-13 gang rules the roost through fear and terror. With an estimated 60,000 "soldiers" nationwide - many of them bearing distinctive tattoos to mark their allegiance - and more than half a million affiliates, from lookouts to family members, MS-13 claims to both protect its own and look after the interests of the economically marginalised.

However the reality for the public is a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence, intimidation, extortion, kidnap and murder. Most people are too terrified to stand against them or even speak out, let alone help the police.

But now a vigilante death squad, called Los Exterminio, is fighting back. Accredited with at least 40 murders of gang members, it first came to prominence last summer when seven bodies were found on a country road. The dead men had all been executed with a bullet to the head and all were thought to have belonged to MS-13.

So what's driven the shadowy figures who operate under Los Exterminio's banner to take such drastic action? And what truth is there to rumours that they are funded by local businessmen and benefit from a collaborative - if secret - relationship with the police?

FILMMAKER'S VIEW
by Lali Houghton

I had never been to El Salvador before and the thought of venturing into unknown waters both fascinated me and drew shivers. When I first spoke to local journalist Bryan Avelar, it immediately became clear that the story was not going to be easy. We were setting out to investigate death squads killing off local gang members, specifically the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, in the western province of San Miguel.

We had all heard of how dangerous El Salvador was - the highest homicide rates outside of war; a mafia born out of poverty; a country crippled by murder and fear. I had also heard of the French filmmaker Christian Poveda who got too close to MS-13 and paid the ultimate price.

Life in El Salvador is cheap and murder is sewn into the fabric of society. There was almost one every hour in the first three months of 2016, according to the official Instituto de Medicina Legal.

At my side was my guide and go-between, Bryan Avelar, aged only 23. I wondered what all these dark murder stories must be doing to his psyche. He was just as fascinated as I was but with a level of wisdom far beyond his years; he was able to see beyond the sensationalist rhetoric of the media and banal statistics fed by the government.

A relentless investigator, he was risking his life to try to shine a light on the complex mess his country finds itself in.

According to online digital newspaper El Faro, 70 percent of businesses in El Salvador have to pay extortion money to MS-13 or the Barrio 18 Gang.

Their tentacles stretch across all aspects of society. And yet with access to the gangs so difficult to achieve, few are able to articulate quite how they have expanded and taken control of the country. The closest I've seen was a book written by anthropologist Jose Martinez D'Aubusson, who spent a year living in a shanty town controlled by MS-13.

Ultimately, it is social and historical factors that trap large swaths of the population in poverty creating a breeding ground of new recruits for the gangs.

And then appear Los Exterminators. A legion of town vigilantes killing off gang members in order to stem the violence that is affecting the local economy. Allegedly assisted by police and financed by local businessmen, they want respite from life under the shadow of MS-13.

Desperate and defiant people who have lost all faith in the authorities, they are filling the lawless vacuum created by a lack of police response. They have taken matters into their own hands and fight fire with fire, ultimately causing yet more death.

The closer we got to them, the more perilous the situation felt. Bryan was told in a veiled threat not to pursue the story further. We managed to get the interview with the Los Exterminio group from a separate source.

My own role was fleeting, a tourist's eye fascinated and trying to make sense of the mayhem. It is Bryan, in the end, who has to live with the ghosts and the constant fear that tomorrow may be his last story.

Source: Al Jazeera News

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With a murder every one and a half hours, El Salvador is counted among the world's most dangerous nations. Awash with weapons and torn apart by the internecine struggles of rival criminal gangs, the country is experiencing violence at levels unseen since the aftermath of its long and brutal civil war.

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Video: Honduras gang violence uproots thousands

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Video: Honduras gang violence uproots thousands

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March 2017

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Honduras gang violence uproots thousands

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Gang violence is an enduring problem in Honduras, one of the most violent countries in the world. The lack of government, security and law allows gangs to run entire districts.

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March 2017

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Across Guatemala, thousands of families have been affected by mass murder, torture, and repression dating back to the country's civil war. Up to 45,000 civilians were forcibly disappeared during the 36-year conflict; an estimated 200,000 were killed. And while peace accords were signed in 1996, the war crimes of that era have largely gone unpunished.

There is no suffering greater than to see a mother waiting for her son who was disappeared.

Aura Elena Farfan, FAMDEGUA representative

"They were massacred, large populations were razed, their lands were destroyed; crops, belongings, houses, clothes ... everything, leaving people in inhumane conditions. How the army could go on like that for so many years? I don't know or understand why," says Hilda Pineda, lead prosecutor on the case related to crimes that occurred at the Creompaz military base.

Now with the help of forensic evidence and the testimony of survivors, some former military leaders are facing trial for the first time.

Fault Lines traveled to Guatemala to meet some of the families still searching for justice and the truth about what happened to their loved ones.
Correspondent Jason Motlagh is an International Reporting Fellow at the Pulitzer Center.

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Across Guatemala, thousands of families have been affected by mass murder, torture, and repression dating back to the country's civil war. Up to 45,000 civilians were forcibly disappeared during the 36-year conflict; an estimated 200,000 were killed. And while peace accords were signed in 1996, the war crimes of that era have largely gone unpunished.

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Al Jazeera obtains exclusive footage of stranded Rohingya refugees

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Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive footage of thousands of displaced Rohingya Muslims waiting to cross over into Bangladesh. Since August, more than 600,000 have fled the violence, which the UN says amounts to "ethnic cleansing".

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Eritrea - Forced Labor, Military Service

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Eritrea - Forced Labor, Military Service

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For nearly 10 consecutive years, media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders has ranked Eritrea at the bottom of its annual index on press freedom. This year, it rose by one place above North Korea.

After a 30-year war of independence with Ethiopia, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, who has now been in power for 26 years, chose not to hold elections but keep the country on a war footing. In 2001, he shut down all privately owned news outlets and began expelling foreign correspondents until none were left in the country.

All that remained was state media, news outlets that toe the government line.

"So there is only one government newspaper, one TV station, one radio station all run by the state," says Abraham Zere, executive director of PEN Eritrea. "The media basically portrays the country as if it's progressing, whereas everybody knows that the country is regressing again."

With only state media operating on the inside, Eritreans rely on news outlets based outside the country.

Radio Erena is perhaps the most prominent. Based in France, the channel beams into the country via satellite and provides one of the only sources of information in Eritrea that are not state-controlled.

It was set up in 2009 by a group of exiled journalists who used to work for state media. Now, from the safety of France, they can report on issues like the constitution, national service and immigration.

The media basically portrays the country as if it's progressing, whereas everybody knows that the country is regressing again.

Abraham Zere, executive director, PEN Eritrea

The channel also provides a lifeline to those fleeing Eritrea.

The UN estimates that about 5,000 Eritreans flee the country every month.

For many, Radio Erena is their primary source of information and can mean the difference between life and death. They face different challenges along the way, so Radio Erena tries to produce coverage that will help them at every stage.

"We put them [refugees] in three different categories," explains Biniam Simon, editor-in-chief, Radio Erena. "For those who are inside the refugee camps, we try to explain the hardship, the danger they face if they try to cross to European countries. For those who reach their destinations, we try to give them information on how to integrate and try to live a new life. For those who are on the road, they do face the biggest challenge - a lot of terrible things happen."

When Radio Erena was getting started in 2009, a disturbing trend was developing along one of the main escape routes out of Eritrea. In the Sudanese and Egyptian deserts, refugees were being kidnapped by human traffickers and held for ransom. They would be given a mobile phone to call relatives and beg for money. Families that did not pay would have to listen to their loved ones being tortured repeatedly as the human traffickers tried to extort their ransom.

Meron Estefanos, a human rights activist and journalist at Radio Erena, was one of the only journalists covering the story, so the victims, and those trying to free them, started calling her for help. She became a go-between: as a journalist, Estefanos would shine a light on individual cases, and as an activist, she would help raise the money to pay their ransoms - which raises the ongoing debate over whether or not to pay ransoms, but in this case, it is difficult to argue.

"The man that just called me said that his two children got kidnapped in Sudan and he is being asked for $10,000," says Estafanos. "And this is a newly arrived refugee himself and he has no money. So I was trying to convince him it's ok, call my friend, I'll send you her number. She will help you."

What sets the Eritrean refugee story apart is that they are not fleeing a war, but the by-product of a war.

Mandatory national service was introduced to rebuild the country after Eritrea's war with Ethiopia. The terms are meant to be 18 months, but according to Amnesty International, national service can be indefinite, often lasting decades - turning it into a form of forced labour. The government denies this, but most Eritrean refugees say that's why they fled the country.

Two years ago the EU quadrupled its foreign aid to Eritrea to $237m to keep refugees out of Europe. The money came with the vague provision that Eritrea would improve its track record on human rights.

However, when a France 24 crew was granted rare access to the country last year, it managed to show, through an unscheduled stop on its guided tour, that the practice of indefinite national service continues.

Eritreans who listen to Radio Erena will know the horrors that await them if they flee the country, but still they choose to leave.

"Migration is not the solution, fleeing is not, it's not gonna change anything," says Estefanos. "I strongly believe that, so I try to talk as much about these issues, about the kidnappings, so that people don't even attempt [to flee]. Whatever is making you unhappy, try to change it in your country. But if you flee, this is what will happen to you. So discouraging people from fleeing from Eritrea, this is one of the things that I fight for."

Contributors:
Meron Estefanos, host, 'Voices of Eritrean Refugees,' Radio Erena
Abraham Zere, executive director, PEN Eritrea
Biniam Simon, editor-in-chief, Radio Erena

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Radio Erena: Eritrea's free voice and refugee hotline

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For nearly 10 consecutive years, media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders has ranked Eritrea at the bottom of its annual index on press freedom. This year, it rose by one place above North Korea.

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Article: Unaccompanied refugee minors’ early life narratives of physical abuse from caregivers and teachers in their home countries (Abuse & Neglect)

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Article: Unaccompanied refugee minors’ early life narratives of physical abuse from caregivers and teachers in their home countries (Abuse & Neglect)

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"There may be several reasons for a child to flee from their home country. War- or conflict related issues including death or persecution of family members and forced recruitment to military forces, seeking protection, family unification, economic motives, opportunities for work, and education are some of the reasons provided."

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News: Minors at border should be thought of as refugees, speakers say (Refugee vs. Asylee)

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News: Minors at border should be thought of as refugees, speakers say (Refugee vs. Asylee)

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"From the head of the U.S. agency in charge of the welfare of more than 50,000 Central American children who have been apprehended at the Mexican border, to the Honduran cardinal who heads the international Catholic relief agency, Caritas, the message was clear, those minors are as much refugees as the people fleeing upheaval in Syria or South Sudan."

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WASHINGTON (CNS) - From the head of the U.S. agency in charge of the welfare of more than 50,000 Central American children who have been apprehended at the Mexican border, to the Honduran cardinal who heads the international Catholic relief agency, Caritas, the message was clear, those minors are as much refugees as the people fleeing upheaval in Syria or South Sudan.

"How are these children different from refugees from Sudan" or other war-torn countries, asked Eskinder Negash, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, known as ORR, in the Department of Health and Human Services. "Regardless of whether they have family here, they are refugees," he said July 8.

By virtue of his position, Negash personally is legally responsible for the welfare of approximately 50,000 minors in ORR custody as arrangements are sought for them to be placed with relatives or in foster care while deportation is pursued.

Speakers at the 2014 National Migration Conference and in interviews with Catholic News Service said broad discussions about migration issues worldwide inevitably led to the recent surge of children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador across the U.S. border.

From an average of 6,000 or 7,000 such minors a year as recently as a few years ago, by mid-June, Homeland Security had apprehended more than 52,000 such children in this fiscal year. That has created a crisis for the Border Patrol, which first encounters them, and for ORR, which must find places to safely care for them.

Negash drew gasps from the audience when he explained that his responsibility for ORR's charges includes personally approving health care decisions, such as how to treat an 11-year-old girl who's pregnant, or another pregnant teen, who was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The unaccompanied minors and other refugees for whom his office is responsible come with myriad horrible stories, he said.

"There is rape, human trafficking, a lot of abuse and a lot of them are sick."

"I'm not telling you this to depress you more, but so you'll talk about it more," Negash said.

Describing the situation in his own country, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and president of Caritas Internationalis, the church's global relief agency, said the children who leave Honduras "flee gangs who want to induct them into a life where they will surely die a violent death at a young age."

Speaking at the opening plenary session July 7, Cardinal Rodriguez, who also serves as one of Pope Francis' key advisers as head of his Council of Cardinals, said: "It is like someone has torn open an artery in Honduras and other Central American countries. Fear, grinding poverty and no future mean we are losing our lifeblood - our young people. If this continues to happen, the hearts of our nations will stop beating."

He added that parents feel they have little choice but to send their children away to save their lives. "The children and young people of these countries need to escape the violence in the hope of finding a safe place, an education, a home, a job - even though on the migrant journey they risk violence and abuse, being trafficked and sometimes death."

During the plenary a short time earlier, Negash had pleaded with the 800 or so participants of the conference to "please use the same language you do when you are talking about other crises," in referring to the children being apprehended at the border.

"Is Honduras a failed state?" he asked. "Do we have organized gangs terrorizing by threatening to kill people?"

Organized gangs and drug cartels that kill with impunity are just as much a threat to a country's stability as the terrorist networks operating elsewhere, he said.

"You don't have to call them Al-Shabaab," he said, referring to the East African terrorist network based in Somalia.

In an interview with CNS and the National Catholic Reporter, Cardinal Rodriguez didn't quite describe his country as a failed state, but acknowledged that "the drug cartels have chosen our country as their battlefield." He told of children being pressured to join drug networks or criminal gangs under threat of being killed, and of "kids killing people. Sometimes $500 is enough to take a life."

He said some recent steps taken by the Honduran government give him some hope that law enforcement and military leaders are coming to terms with what it will take to regain control of their country. Among them are a recent declaration that any airplanes suspected of carrying drugs through Honduran air space will be shot down and the recent extradition to the United States of two Honduran drug cartel leaders. Both seem to have had some effect on the drug cartels, he said.

Other speakers at the July 8 plenary described a world awash with refugees and increasingly stretched resources to assist them.

Shelly Pitterman, regional representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, ticked off statistics: 51 million people worldwide last year in refugee situations, yet a 25-year low number of displaced people were able to repatriate to their home countries.

The refugee resettlement program in the United States "is the engine of the global program," he said, noting that the majority of refugees are resettled through networks run by the Catholic Church. But worldwide, resources are stretched too thinly.

He also said that although most of the children being sent away from their home countries on their own are coming to the United States, it's not the only place they go. The number going to other Central American countries has risen seven-fold, he said.

Anne Richard, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration in the State Department, said the way to combat the need for people to flee their countries is to push for peace.

"The only real solution to this massive, malignant crisisis for the fighting to stop," she said.

The conference opened with a Mass at St. Patrick Church nearby. The principal celebrant, Washington Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, urged Catholics to recognize the human beings behind "the data, statistics and policy responses."

"Clearly we belong to our own natural families, but we also belong to God's family, with an obligation to care for one another," he said. "We need to look at one another precisely as brothers and sisters, children of a loving God who invites us to a new relationship to one another."

Along with panel discussions and workshops, the conference also included a live video feed from the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.

Located in the Turkana District of northwestern Kenya, the camp has housing, counseling and education programs for more than 160,000 refugees, provided through humanitarian organizations including Jesuit Refugee Service.

During the feed, Red, a refugee who has lived in the camp for more than 22 years, explained how he became inspired to "give what he has been given" by becoming a teacher and working with the young children in the camp.

"When I came to this camp, I didn't know anything," Red said. "It was only after I arrived here that I received an education and learned more than I ever believed possible. These teachers are no longer around, but I pay them back for everything they have given by providing young children with the education I have received. I believe that is what we are fighting for - to shape the lives of others in the same way my life has been shaped."
- By Patricia Zapor, Catholic News Service. Julia Willis contributed to this story.

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Minors at border should be thought of as refugees, speakers say

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WASHINGTON (CNS) - From the head of the U.S. agency in charge of the welfare of more than 50,000 Central American children who have been apprehended at the Mexican border, to the Honduran cardinal who heads the international Catholic relief agency, Caritas, the message was clear, those minors are as much refugees as the people fleeing upheaval in Syria or South Sudan.

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News: 70,000 Kids Will Show Up Alone at Our Border This Year. What Happens to Them?

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News: 70,000 Kids Will Show Up Alone at Our Border This Year. What Happens to Them?

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(2014)

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In a doorless desert safe house in northwestern Mexico, the drug traffickers sized up the boy-17 years old, 1,700 miles from home, gay, alone-and asked if he was too scared to strap on a load of marijuana and walk across the border into Arizona.

The kid-I'll call him Adrián-paused to consider his options. He didn't have any. Okay, he told them. He'd do it.

He'd grown up mostly on the streets in Guatemala City, his abusive father a crack addict and his mother everywhere but around, leaving him with a thin, green-eyed prostitute friend who would sometimes have sex with johns right there next to him. He'd seen robberies, stabbings, shootings; he'd never once set foot in a classroom. Eventually he started making a little money selling clothes and makeup in the city's colonial district. It wasn't much, but even so the Barrio 18 street gang took notice and started asking for a cut. When Adrián didn't budge, they pockmarked his tiny stall with bullets. It was time to leave.

Just like that, Adrián became part of an explosion of child migrants traveling alone to sneak into the United States, a group government officials and advocates have begun referring to, with alarm, as "the surge." The number of undocumented children-mostly teens, but some as young as five-apprehended crossing the border without parents or guardians has more than doubled in the past two years, while the number of adults caught at the border increased just 18 percent. On June 2, President Obama described it as an "urgent humanitarian situation," asking Congress for an additional $1.4 billion to deal with the influx and creating a multiagency taskforce, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to coordinate the federal response.

The surge was already in full swing by the time Adrián started on his path north, in December 2012. He took a bus to the Mexico-Guatemala border, crossed the Suchiate River by inner tube into the state of Chiapas, and stole a bike to pedal to the city of Tapachula. He walked 150 miles north, making sure to skirt La Arrocera, a broad swath of scrubland known for migrant kidnappings and assaults. He slept on the doorstep of a church after finding the migrant shelter burned to the ground.

Then, in the town of Arriaga, he hopped aboard La Bestia, the infamous freight train that many migrants ride to the US border despite the often-repeated horror stories: the surging wheels that slice through people who slip trying to jump on moving boxcars, or fall off while sleeping; the thieves who go car to car with machetes or .38s; the night raids from Mexican law enforcement as well as kidnappers sent by Los Zetas.

Adrián rode La Bestia to Guadalajara, where he spent a sleepless Christmas night on a sidewalk. He got back on and rode for days until reaching Monterrey, where he was forced off the train when someone attacked him with a machete because he was gay. He fled barefoot on the trackside gravel and walked an hour to a village, where, his feet bleeding, he pleaded for a pair of shoes.

He begged for money. He sold newspapers. He even sold his body for $50. He headed north to the border at Nuevo Laredo; when he couldn't get across, he moved backward, 450 miles south to San Luis Potosí, 200 miles west to Guadalajara once more, before heading another 1,000 miles north to the Sonora Desert, finally ending up in that decrepit safe house near the border.

So when it was time to make his final push across the line, and the traffickers asked if he was too scared to continue, Adrián said no. Fear, after all, was driving him forward.

When the Border Patrol caught Adrián a week later in the Arizona desert-he'd ditched the pot at a drop point along the way-he became one of the 38,833 unaccompanied minors apprehended by the Border Patrol in fiscal year 2013. That was a 59 percent jump from the year before, and a 142 percent increase from fiscal 2011; no one knows how many more kids avoided Border Patrol detection, or never got that far. This year, officials have told advocates they anticipate the numbers to double again, to as many as 74,000 unaccompanied children.* That's equivalent to every single student in Dallas' 81 public middle and high schools getting up and walking across the border in a single year.

Although some have traveled from as far away as Sri Lanka and Tanzania, the bulk are minors from Mexico and from Central America's so-called Northern Triangle-Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, which together account for 74 percent of the surge. Long plagued by instability and unrest, these countries have grown especially dangerous in recent years: Honduras imploded following a military coup in 2009 and now has the world's highest murder rate. El Salvador has the second-highest, despite the 2012 gang truce between Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. Guatemala, new territory for the Zetas cartel, has the fifth-highest murder rate; meanwhile, the cost of tortillas has doubled as corn prices have skyrocketed due to increased American ethanol production (Guatemala imports half of its corn) and the conversion of farmland to sugarcane and oil palm for biofuel.

Many of the kids are coming to help a family in crushing poverty. Some are trying to join a parent who left years ago, before the recession and increased border enforcement slowed down adult immigration. Still others are leaving because of violence from family members and gangs. According to a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 58 percent of the 400 youth the agency interviewed "had suffered, been threatened, or feared serious harm" that might merit international protection. "This is becoming less like an immigration issue and much more like a refugee issue," says Wendy Young, executive director of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a DC-based nonprofit that helps unaccompanied immigrant kids find pro bono legal services. "Because this really is a forced migration. This is not kids choosing voluntarily to leave."

This year, a record number of unaccompanied minors are expected to be caught at the border-74,000, as many as all the kids in Dallas' middle and high schools.

US authorities have struggled with how to handle the tens of thousands of kids who end up caught by the Border Patrol. Those coming from Mexico are taken straight back across. The rest are referred to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement (rather than being put in immigration detention with adults) and placed in temporary shelters while their deportation proceedings get under way.

Journalists aren't allowed into these shelters "for safety reasons," an ORR spokeswoman told me-due to concerns about trafficking victims, the agency goes to great lengths to conceal the exact locations of its facilities. It also forbids the groups that run them, including Catholic Charities and Southwest Key, from commenting on the issue. It took me a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain basic statistics, like the number of facilities (80) and the average time kids stay in the shelters (45 days in 2013, down from 72 in 2011).

Susan Terrio, a Georgetown University anthropologist, visited 19 shelters over four years before the government cut off her access. She found an almost hermetically sealed system: "The kids were never left unattended. They went to school inside, they played sports inside, and they only got out for supervised outings in the community or for medical and mental-health appointments." Maria Woltjen, director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights, says that as a result, unaccompanied children are essentially invisible: "Nobody in Chicago knows there are 400 kids detained in our midst. You walk by, and you think it's just an old nursing home, and it's actually all these immigrant kids who are detained inside."

In fiscal 2011, ORR had 53 shelters that housed 6,560 kids. By 2013, there were 80 shelters with nearly 25,000 unaccompanied children. The surge was so unexpected that when it first began, the feds temporarily put hundreds of kids in emergency dormitories at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. According to a report from the Women's Refugee Commission, "the facility looked and felt like an emergency hurricane shelter." As recently as May, shelters in South Texas were so crowded that ORR was sending hundreds of kids to Lackland, which has room for 1,000.

The majority of shelters are in border states, often hours from big cities, which means it's even harder for kids to find legal representation and stave off being sent back to the dangerous situations they fled. When KIND first started its pro bono work, Young says, it estimated that three-quarters of all unaccompanied kids received no legal representation. KIND was able to get that number to 50 percent, she says, but given the influx, "I fear now that we've slipped backwards quite dramatically."

Nonprofits like KIND say the government should appoint lawyers for unaccompanied children, noting that many actually qualify for legal status via asylum, special immigrant juvenile status (for abandoned, abused, or neglected kids), or visas set aside for victims of crimes or trafficking. But proposals in that vein, by lawmakers including Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), have gone nowhere.

In mid-December, I visited the immigration court in Harlingen, Texas, a squat beige building that sits in the shadow of crisscrossing highway overpasses a few miles from the Rio Grande. The area is home to the nation's highest concentration of children in immigrant shelters, and the Harlingen court is where those kids appear before an immigration judge. Inside Judge Howard Achtsam's courtroom, the Homeland Security attorney sat at a table piled high with files. One of the four children who appeared before Achtsam that day represented himself; another appeared with his attorney from ProBAR, the American Bar Association's pro bono legal project in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Attorneys were representing two clients who weren't there, thanks in part to ORR's new emphasis on quickly reunifying kids with family members, often in faraway cities, as they await deportation proceedings. (Some 90 percent of children placed in shelters end up with US-based family.) While that is generally a good thing, said ProBAR director Kimi Jackson-certainly better than the months-long shelter stays that were common as recently as last year-it means that attorneys are less likely to be able to meet and interview kids. It also means that the government has less time to vet the people claiming to be the kids' relatives.

What happens to the children, I asked Jackson, once they go off ProBAR's radar? "I don't have data," she told me, shaking her head. "I don't know that anyone does."

Toting a walkie-talkie and chatting as she goes, Julie Kessler parts a sea of teenagers with gelled hairdos, cheap cologne, and skinny jeans. She's got an eye out for colors-red for Norteños, blue for Sureños, both banned-and for making out. "There's too much kissing for my taste," she tells me with a smirk, right before she pulls aside a boy for his red T-shirt. She hands him a gray one, emblazoned with the San Francisco County Sheriff's Department logo, that hangs loose on his skinny frame. "Off you go!" she says.

Kessler is the principal of San Francisco International High School, a public school for newcomers in the city's Mission District: 100 percent of its students are recent immigrants and English-language learners. Spanish- and Chinese-speaking students dominate, though 14 other languages are represented. "Most schools are like, 'I don't know what to do with this population! Their needs are so different from the rest of my class!'" Kessler says. Here, "they are the rest of the class." She estimates that about a fifth of her students immigrated alone.

This is where I first met Adrián. Back when he was apprehended in Tucson, he sat for a spell in a heavily air-conditioned Border Patrol holding cell known as a hielera ("ice box"). Then he stayed at a nearby ORR shelter for a few months before they asked him where he wanted to go next. With no family in the States, he chose San Francisco, and that's how he ended up at a youth shelter in the city. His social worker later connected him to a pro bono attorney. (He told me he won legal status earlier this year, though he was unsure exactly how.)

Integrating a student like Adrián-with zero schooling and years of trauma-is no small task for Kessler and her staff, nor is it an uncommon one. "The vast majority of our kids are suffering from PTSD of one form or another," she says. "For some of them, that's about, 'I'm fleeing a civil war.' But for more of them, it is on a personal level, of 'I was living on the streets of Honduras, and finally realized that wasn't going to work.'" And then there are the challenges of the kids' new American homes, often with relatives who are essentially strangers, in neighborhoods rife with the same problems-gang violence, drugs-they once tried to escape.

In Los Angeles, the school district's mental-health director, Pia Escudero, reviewed records for students entering a newcomer school there; she found that 94 percent of those given mental-health screenings reported at least three traumatic events, and 65 percent had clinical symptoms "in the range of PTSD and depression." They experience hyperarousal and hyperalertness, and everyday urban sounds-say, a helicopter passing overhead-can trigger flashbacks.

San Francisco International offers counseling and mental-health services, and to many of the kids, the school is a refuge: Nearly 80 percent said they felt safe at school, 10 percent better than the districtwide numbers. The first time I visited, the school went on lockdown when a student brought a pellet gun to campus. But he wasn't in a gang, Kessler told me after five San Francisco cops showed up to secure the scene; he was just fronting.

It was here that I met Audelina Aguilar, who at 14 made the journey from Guatemala to the US border by herself, warding off a would-be rapist in Mexico and walking past corpses in southern Texas before making it to the Bay Area, where her brother lived. She cleaned houses full time for two years, then got so sick she had to go to the emergency room, where the nurses asked why she was not in school. Now a legal permanent resident and a senior who's been accepted to several colleges, she's also the head of a growing household, caring for two younger brothers who were caught crossing the border and sent to San Francisco while their immigration hearings play out. Aguilar has seven more siblings and her parents back in the western Guatemalan highlands.

And then there's Adrián, who told me the guys at the shelter stole his stuff and constantly harassed him; Kessler noted that it was a daily battle for him to get to school. One day, as we walked through the near-empty cafeteria, another boy catcalled Adrián, who shot him a sideways glance.

"I'm not here to make friends," he told me. He was wearing a gray T-shirt, black jeans, and a gauzy scarf full of tie-dyed peace symbols that sort of covered up two large bruises on his neck. He said he was hoping to graduate and move on, maybe go to cosmetology school.

In January, when I emailed Kessler to set up a final interview with Adrián, she told me that the shelter had decided to move him to San Jose. She hasn't heard from him since.

Two weeks later, my phone rang. "I'm here in San Francisco," Adrián said. "Do you want to meet now?" I trudged through the February rain to a McDonald's on Market Street. Adrián was wearing '80s rocker ripped jeans and kelly-green nail polish and ordering two cheeseburgers and fries. I helped him carry his beat-up bike downstairs, and we settled into a booth to talk.

He decided to leave for San Jose, he told me, to get away from the drama at the shelter. It was boring in the South Bay, and he missed school, even though he found it a bit tedious-but soon he'd be turning 19, and at that point he could live on his own with the government's blessing.

And the bruises I'd seen on his throat? I mean, I had to ask. "," he said, his voice caramel sweet and condescending, "those weren't bruises. They were hickeys."

We swapped contact info one last time, and as I headed back to the office, I remembered something he'd once told me about why he'd left Guatemala. "I wasn't really looking for the American Dream," he'd said, readjusting his scarf for the hundredth time. "I just wanted to get far away."

UPDATE, November 20, 2014 (Ian Gordon): According to US Customs and Border Protection, 68,541 unaccompanied children were apprehended at the border in fiscal 2014. Despite some government funding for legal aid, many of them are still struggling to find lawyers. Meanwhile, President Obama's executive action does not provide relief from deportation for recent child migrants.
This story was made possible by a fellowship from the French-American Foundation-United States.

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70,000 kids will show up alone at our border this year. What happens to them?

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In a doorless desert safe house in northwestern Mexico, the drug traffickers sized up the boy-17 years old, 1,700 miles from home, gay, alone-and asked if he was too scared to strap on a load of marijuana and walk across the border into Arizona. The kid-I'll call him Adrián-paused to consider his options.

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ORR Program Overview: About Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (Federal Government)

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ORR Program Overview: About Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (Federal Government)

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Last Reviewed: December 16, 2015

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ORR Policies: Children Entering the United States Unaccompanied (Federal Government)

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ORR Policies: Children Entering the United States Unaccompanied (Federal Government)

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Published: January 30, 2015

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Section 1: Placement in ORR Care Provider Facilities
1.1 Summary of Policies for Placement and Transfer of Unaccompanied Alien Children in ORR Care Provider Facilities
1.2.7 Placing Family Members (Siblings and Children of Unaccompanied Alien Children)

1.3 Referrals to ORR and Initial Placement
1.3.1 Request for Information from the Referring Federal Agency
1.3.2 ORR Placement Designation
1.3.3 Care Provider Placement Acceptance
1.3.4 Transfer of Custody to ORR
1.3.5 Initial Placements in the Event of an Emergency or Influx

1.5 Placement Inquiries
1.5.1 ORR National Call Center

1.6 Determining the Age of an Individual without Lawful Immigration Status
1.6.1 Unaccompanied Alien Children in HHS Custody
1.6.2 Instructions

Section 2: Safe and Timely Release from ORR Care

2.1 Summary of the Safe and Timely Release Process
2.3 Key Participants in the Release Process
2.3.1 ORR Federal Field Specialists
2.3.2 Case Managers
2.3.3 Case Coordinators
2.3.4 Child Advocates

2.4 Sponsor Assessment Criteria and Home Studies
2.4.1 Assessment Criteria
2.4.2 Home Study Requirement
2.4.3 Additional Questions and Answers on This Topic

ORR Policies on Requesting Background Checks of Sponsors
2.5.1 Criteria for Background Checks
2.5.2 Results of Background Checks on Release Decisions
2.5.3 Additional Questions and Answers on This Topic

2.6 Effect of Sponsor Immigration Status on Release
2.6.1 Application Process
2.6.2 Fingerprints
2.6.3 Other Background Checks Related to Immigration Status
2.6.4 Results of Immigration-related Checks
2.9 Bond Hearings for Unaccompanied Alien Children
Section 3: Services

3.2 Care Provider Admissions and Orientation for Unaccompanied Alien Children
3.2.1 Admissions for Unaccompanied Alien Children
3.2.2 Orientation

3.3 Care Provider Required Services
3.3.1 UC Assessment and Case Review
3.3.2 Long Term and Concurrent Planning
3.3.3 Screening for Child Trafficking and Services for Victims
3.3.4 Safety Planning
3.3.5 Academic Educational Services
3.3.6 Independent Living and Vocational Educational Services
3.3.7 Services Related to Culture, Language, and Religious Observation
3.3.8 Recreation and Leisure Time Services
3.3.9 Nutritional Services
3.3.10 Telephone Calls, Visitation, and Mail
3.3.11 Clothing and Personal Grooming
3.3.12 Assignment of Chores
3.3.13 Behavior Management
3.3.14 Transportation Services
3.3.15 Use of Restraints or Seclusion in Emergency Safety Situations In Residential Treatment Centers (RTCs)
3.3.16 Notification and Reporting of the Death of an Unaccompanied Alien Child
3.3.17 Use of Restraints during Transport and in Immigration Court
3.3.18 Restraints in Immigration Court and Asylum Interviews

3.5 Guiding Principles for the Care of Unaccompanied Alien Children Who are LGBTQI
3.5.1 Zero Tolerance for Discrimination and Harassment
3.5.2 Prohibition on Segregation and Isolation
3.5.3 Confidentiality with Regard to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
3.5.4 Housing
3.5.5 Restroom and Dressing Area Accommodations

3.6 ORR Long Term Foster Care
3.6.1 ORR Long Term Foster Care Service Provision
3.6.2 Change in Placements while in ORR Long Term Foster Care
3.6.3 Additional Questions and Answers about this Topic

Section 4: Preventing, Detecting, and Responding to Sexual Abuse and Harassment

4.1 Summary of Policies for Preventing, Detecting, and Responding to Sexual Abuse and Harassment
4.2 Zero Tolerance Policy
4.2.1 Application
4.2.2 Care Provider Requirements

4.3 Personnel
4.3.1 Prevention of Sexual Abuse Coordinator and Compliance Manager
4.3.2 Employee Background Investigations and Hiring Decisions
4.3.3 Staff Training
4.3.4 Employee Performance Evaluations and Promotion Decisions
4.3.5 Disciplinary Sanctions and Corrective Actions

4.4 Staffing and Supervision
4.4.1 Staffing Levels
4.4.2 Staffing Plans and Video Monitoring Restrictions
4.4.3 Searches of Children and Youth
4.4.4 Upgrades to Facilities and Technologies

4.5 Responsive Planning
4.5.1 Access to Community Service Providers and Resources
4.5.2 Forensic Medical Examinations

4.6 Coordinated Response
4.6.1 Coordinated Response Policies and Procedures
4.6.2 Responder Duties
4.6.3 Protecting Children and Youth
4.6.4 Interventions for Children or Youth Who Engage in Sexual Abuse

4.7 Educating Children and Youth
4.7.1 Educating Children and Youth on Sexual Abuse and Sexual Harassment
4.7.2 Bulletin Board Postings
4.7.3 Pamphlets on Sexual Abuse and Harassment

4.8 Assessment for Risk
4.8.1 Assessment for Risk
4.8.2 Use of Assessment Information

4.9 Medical and Mental Health Care
4.9.1 Emergency Medical and Mental Health Care Services Following an Incident of Sexual Abuse
4.9.2 Medical Services for Victims at Risk of Pregnancy
4.9.3 Ongoing Medical and Mental Health Care
4.9.4 Religious Objections

4.10 Reporting and Follow-up
4.10.1 Methods for Children and Youth to Report
4.10.2 Care Provider Reporting Requirements
4.10.3 Sexual Abuse and Harassment Follow-up
4.10.4 Notification and Access to Attorneys/Legal Representatives and Families
4.10.5 Confidentiality
4.10.6 UC Sexual Abuse Hotline

Section 5: Program Management

5.1 Responding to Inquiries from the Media
5.1.1 Policies for ORR Grantees
5.1.2 How ORR Responds to Press Inquiries
5.1.3 Requests to Interview a Specific Child
5.1.4 Requests to Visit a Facility
5.1.5 Requests for General Information and Data

5.2 ORR Policies on Requests to Visit ORR Care Provider Facilities
5.2.1 Evaluation Criteria
5.2.2 Special Arrangements
5.2.3 Visitation Protocol

5.3 Testimony by Employees and Production of Documents Where the United States is Not a Party
5.3.1 Care Provider Testimony and Views
5.3.2 Confidentiality of Information
5.3.3 Release of Records Without Prior Approval

5.5 ORR Monitoring and Compliance
5.5.1 ORR Monitoring Activities
5.5.2 Follow Up and Corrective Actions
5.5.3 Foster Care Monitoring
5.5.4 Care Provider Internal Program Monitoring, Evaluation, and Quality Assurance

5.6 Reporting and Record Keeping
5.6.1 Program Reporting Requirements
5.6.2 Maintaining Case Files
5.6.3 Record Management, Retention and Safekeeping

5.7 Policies to Protect Sponsors from Fraud
5.7.1 ORR Efforts to Help Prevent Fraud
5.7.2 Responding to Fraud Attempts

Section 6: Resources and Services Available After Release from ORR Care

6.1 Summary of Resources and Services Available After Release from ORR Care

6.2 Post Release Services
6.2.1 Levels of Post Release Services
6.2.2 Post Release Service Areas
6.2.3 Timeframe for Post Release Services
6.2.4 Post Release Service Providers: Case Reporting
6.2.5 Post Release Service Records Management, Retention and Information Sharing

6.4 ORR National Call Center

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Children Entering the United States Unaccompanied

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The ORR Guide to Children Entering the United States Unaccompanied is a summary of ORR policies for the placement, release and care of unaccompanied children in ORR custody. The guide is for members of the public and other stakeholders and is organized into three main sections.

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(Related to legal issues)

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Their parents sent them to the United States to escape brutal violence. But to stay, they need to convince courts that sending them here constituted child abuse.

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Article: Alone and Unrepresented: A Call to Congress to Provide Counsel for Unaccompanied Minors (Need for Legal Representation)

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Article: Alone and Unrepresented: A Call to Congress to Provide Counsel for Unaccompanied Minors (Need for Legal Representation)

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"Part I illustrates why unaccompanied minors in the United States need
legal representation by focusing on the complexity of immigration proceedings, the likelihood that children will be deprived of their liberty at some point in the process, and the law and practice relating to representation. Part 11 analyzes how developing regional and international legal standards for children's rights, refugee rights, and the right to free civil counsel support the right to free legal counsel for unaccompanied children in immigration proceedings. Part III identifies the differing approaches to legal representation for unaccompanied minors around the world, and Part IV endorses a model for representation for unaccompanied minors based on developing human rights law as well as best practices and ethical standards in the United States."

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Article: Unaccompanied Minors: Breaking Down Barriers to Health (Integrative Approach)

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Article: Unaccompanied Minors: Breaking Down Barriers to Health (Integrative Approach)

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"Up to 75% of unaccompanied minors gain asylum with proper legal representation, which also gives them eligibility to health services. A multidisciplinary collaboration of educators, legal advocates, public health officials, behavioral health and primary care providers, academics and graduate health science students worked together to leverage creative funding and other resources to connect youth with legal representation, ensure school-based support, provide for youth development activities, and deliver comprehensive primary care and mental health services to this vulnerable population."

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Article: Longitudinal follow-up of the mental health of unaccompanied refugee minors (Mental Health)

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Article: Longitudinal follow-up of the mental health of unaccompanied refugee minors (Mental Health)

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"Traumatic experiences (SLE), mental health symptoms (HSCL-37A, RATS) and daily stressors (DSSYR) were measured at arrival in Belgium, after 6 and 18 months. UMs reported generally high scores on anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)."

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Article: A Risk and Resilience Perspective on Unaccompanied Refugee Minors, from a Lost Boy Perspective (Resilience)

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Article: A Risk and Resilience Perspective on Unaccompanied Refugee Minors, from a Lost Boy Perspective (Resilience)

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"Using a risk and resilience framework, we summarize the research on URMs, illustrating the challenges and issues with a case study of a resilient Lost Boy from Sudan who became a social worker. We discuss strengths, coping strategies, and resilience, exploring the ways in which many URMs are able to effectively meet the challenge of adapting to a new country and culture, thriving despite the extreme adversity they have experienced, as well as sources of resilience within URMs that have allowed them to adapt and even thrive in a vastly different cultural environment despite exposure to multiple risks.

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Catholic Charities: Unaccompanied Minor Program

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Catholic Charities: Unaccompanied Minor Program

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Catholic Charities finds caring foster homes for unaccompanied minors which are foreign-born children in the United States without parents or legal guardians. T...

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Catholic Charities Community Services provides food, shelter, housing and gives support to foster care children, families, veterans, sex trafficked survivors and other vulnerable people.

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Catholic Charities is a licensed child welfare agency that has provided foster care for foreign-born children since 1984. Since that time, we have served nearly 1,000 children from more than 30 different countries.

Our Unaccompanied Minor Program (UMP) provides services for foreign-born children who have arrived in the United States without a parent or legal guardian. Whether the child is a refugee with legal immigration status or an undocumented immigrant, the child is placed with a loving, compassionate foster family for safe, nurturing care.

These children are among the most vulnerable children who are in need of foster care because they are alone and often have no one in this country to turn to for help and support. The goal of our program is to meet the children's basic needs in a safe and nurturing family environment.

We have an urgent need for families who are able and willing to share their home with these children for either long- or short-term care. As a foster parent, you'll receive these services...

Foster families are provided with training to become licensed in the state of Arizona.

There is no expense to the foster family.

The children have insurance to cover medical needs.

Foster parents are provided with a foster care stipend to cover the expenses of adding a new member to the family.

For more information, please contact Kassaw Merie by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or calling 602-530-5520.

Help Support Unaccompanied Minors

If you were a child, alone in a country where no one spoke your language and all customs were strange, how would you cope? This is the life of an unaccompanied minor. They leave their parents, community and country to escape violence and other crisis situations.

Will you join us in helping to provide for these children? By giving a one-time gift of $25, $50 or $150, you'll help foster families provide for school tutoring, dental care and other needed support. Or consider becoming a monthly donor and joining our Foster Care Fund Team. Together, we can give these little ones the support they need to succeed until they find a permanent home or are reunited with their families.

Children like Peter who came from Sudan as one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. His parents, village and extended family were destroyed during war. Peter and other boys started walking, looking for help and safety. Ending up in a refugee camp, Peter eventually was sent to the United States at age 14.

Terrified and not understanding where he was going, Catholic Charities staff met Peter at the airport and took him to his foster care home. Then staff enrolled him in English classes and helped to get him into school.

From there, Peter learned the language and started making friends. He graduated high school and then went to college, getting his bachelor's degree and becoming a social worker to help other refugees coming to the United States Now as an adult, he is providing for himself and has a community he belongs to and loves.

If he hadn't received the support, life would have been even more difficult. You and Catholic Charities can work to make sure no unaccompanied children coming to the United States are alone. By giving a gift of $25, $50 or $150, or becoming a monthly giver on our Foster Care Fund Team, you can help provide for these children's needs today.

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Catholic Charities is a licensed child welfare agency that has provided foster care for foreign-born children since 1984. Since that time, we have served nearly...