Lost in all the Syrian refugee mess is what has happened to the thousands of Latin American children that fled north to escape war, violence and drug cartels. Secretary Clinton, to her shame, urged that these children should be sent back. (www.huffingtonpost.com/...) President Obama put many of these kids in horrible conditions, including kennels (www.dailykos.com/...). And sadly, thousands of these kids were never given a lawyer, despite the vast importance of having one.
Politico report mirrors similar reports from the NY Times and Washington Post.
www.politico.com/… Over the last year and a half, nearly 3000 children were deported with no lawyer and only one appearance before an immigration judge. (That doesn’t mean that the other thousands of kids had lawyers, it just means those kids usually got another hearing to try and get one).
The swiftness of the process underscores the “get tough” approach taken by the White House as it scrambled to respond to the flood of border crossings in the first six months of 2014. But when applied to defendants so young, the record undercuts Obama’s promise of compassion for those caught in what he himself has described as a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the poverty and violence in Central America.
“The younger they are, the more vulnerable they are,” said Tin Thanh Nguyen, a North Carolina immigration lawyer who has closely watched the child migrant cases. “Yet they are not afforded the maximum due process that is available to them.”
The ACLU and others have filed suit on behalf of these children and a Federal Judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan, has shown that he is deeply troubled by the government’s actions.
"The data you have uncovered shows that the government's deportation hearings for children do not afford due process for children of any age — from the most tender, small children to teenagers,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, deputy legal director for the ACLU of Southern California and one of the lead attorneys in the Seattle case. “Any caring human being looking at those numbers should realize that our system is grossly unjust. ... It’s appalling.”
While we all rightfully condemn the (mostly) republican politicians who are turning their back on the Syrian refugees, we shouldn’t forget that immigrants are facing significant problems from democrats as well. And we should demand that both parties do better for them.