Guest Column
The Littlest Deportees
- The Littlest Deportees
- By Camille Taiara
- New America Media,
- Mar 09, 2007
The plight of seven-year-old refugee Elián González
riveted the nation when he was forcibly returned to Cuba in 2000. Today,
thousands of children, some as young as five, travel north every day
desperate to reconnect with their families, some of whom are in the U.S.
legally. Many of these child refugees wind up being detained, deported, or
temporarily reunited with family while under the threat of deportation.
There is no home for them either here or back in their own countries.
Dilcia Rodriguez is one such case.
Two years ago, the seven-year-old Dilcia made the 3,000-mile trek from
southwestern Honduras, across El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, with a
nine-year-old cousin and a 16-year-old uncle. Border Patrol agents
apprehended them after they crossed the Rio Grande into Brownsville,
Texas. When the agents learned that the children had family in San
Francisco, they were transferred to California and reunited with
relatives. 
Their reunion, however, was overshadowed by formal
deportation orders against the three migrants. Dilcia’s 16-year-old uncle
eventually returned to Honduras. Her cousin was reunited with his mother
who, like Dilcia’s parents, is fighting to keep him with her in the U.S.
Dilcia, now nine, likes her life in San Francisco. She has been going to
school, making new friends and feels truly safe for the first time, her
parents say. So far, Dilcia’s parents have managed to stave off her
deportation by filing legal appeals, asking Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) to drop the case. ICE attorneys have denied the appeals.
Attorney Lisa Frydman of Legal Services for Children isn’t surprised. “It
definitely seems like there’s some kind of trend to deny requests to
forego deportation proceedings against children with extremely compelling
cases like Dilcia’s,” says Frydman, who filed the second appeal on her
behalf.
Frydman says she has seen two similar cases denied in the past year
involving minors whose parents are in the U.S. legally. “I’m in touch with
advocates in different regions of the country where it’s also been a
problem,” she says.
ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice would not say what standards ICE uses when
considering such appeals, or if there has been a change in policy. “We
have a system of immigration courts and it’s appropriate to use them,”
says Kice.
The Rodriguezes now plan to file an asylum claim for Dilcia.
In the spring of 1998, Dilcia’s parents fled Honduras and left her—only a
few months old--behind. They say they were the targets of gang violence.
“They killed my brother,” explains Dilcia’s mother, also named Dilcia, who
was 19 at the time. “I was afraid they’d come after me. I left her behind
with great pain in my soul.”
“Honduras is overwhelmed by gangs,” says her husband, Candido. “When they
attack someone, they also go after the family, because they think the
family will make problems for them.”
Honduran sociologist Ernesto Bardales, who has testified in more than a
dozen asylum hearings on behalf of Hondurans fleeing gang violence,
corroborates Candido’s account. The gang problem exploded in Honduras
beginning in the early 1990’s, when the U.S. began deporting large numbers
of Honduran youth who had become exposed to gangs in Los Angeles and
elsewhere. Residents of poverty-stricken areas of Honduras, like the
Rodriguezes were, are among the most vulnerable to victimization.
Fearing the trip to the U.S. without money or papers would be too
dangerous for an infant, the Rodriguezes left Dilcia in the care of her
maternal grandmother. The young couple settled in San Francisco, where
their second daughter Seidis (now six) was born. In 1998 they received
Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a benefit the Clinton Administration
extended to Hondurans already in the U.S. after Hurricane Mitch ravaged
the country, and which first Clinton and now Bush have renewed every year
since then.
Only those Hondurans already living in the U.S. by Dec. 30, 1998, are
eligible for TPS. The benefit doesn’t allow them to travel outside the
country, to apply for permanent residency, or to bring relatives – even
dependent children – into the U.S.
In November 2004, another of Dilcia’s uncles was murdered, in this case,
with machetes. Dilcia saw his body. Two months later, her aunt was killed.
The Rodriguezes say Dilcia’s grandmother – the girl’s caretaker – was
overcome by grief.
The grandmother sent Dilcia on the journey north without telling her
parents. The arduous trip north and the killing she witnessed have taken
its toll. A therapist at Mission Family Center recently diagnosed Dilcia
with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Sometimes she walks in her sleep and she screams,” says Candido. “She’s
always nervous.”
Dilcia’s case may seem dramatic. But Gregory Chen of the DC-based U.S.
Committee for Refugees and Immigrants says that the increasing number of
undocumented children coming to the U.S. has become “a serious
humanitarian crisis.”
More than 122,000 minors were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection
agents in 2004, according to a report published by the Department of
Homeland Security’s Inspector General. All but 20,000 were Mexican, and
the vast majority were simply sent back across the border.
According to Chen, after 72 hours, unaccompanied children who remain are
placed in long-term facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
In 2004, there were 6,200 children. Today, Chen estimates the number to be
closer to 8,000. Between 80 and 90 percent of them are from Honduras,
Guatemala, or El Salvador.
“Most have suffered trauma, either in their home country or on the trip
here, and come from extremely poor backgrounds,” says Chen. Two-thirds of
these children are eventually reunited with family members in the U.S. –
but still face deportation orders.
Many have suffered abuse or neglect, gang violence, or government
prosecution, according to Chen. Often their parents had fled here earlier
as the only way to escape abject poverty and violence as well as survive
and earn money to support their families back home, he adds.
“The basic question is, should the government be expending limited
resources to go through the full deportation process for these
children,,,who’ve simply come here to be with their parents?” asks Chen.
Sitting on the sofa of her parents’ small apartment, donning her best
dress, shiny white shoes and flashing a big grin, it’s hard to imagine
everything Dilcia has been through.
These days, Dilcia sings at church and is an honor student at Cesar Chavez
Elementary School in San Francisco’s Mission District. She likes to jump
rope and play soccer. But when the time comes for her to go to an
immigration court hearing, she can’t sleep. “She cries a lot. She thinks
they’re going to send her back,” her mother says.
“She’s afraid she’ll be killed.”
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