Who Will Stand Up For Them?

David Oliver Relin

Originally Published in Parade magazine, August 4th, 2002

By the time he turned 13, life in his native Honduras had become unbearable for Edwin Munoz. His father was dead. His mother had abandoned him. Edwin lived with a cousin who forced him to beg on the streets and beat him with car tools if he didn't return with enough money. Edwin was afraid to report the abuse and risk being thrown out, because he'd heard that Honduran authorities killed homeless children. So, with little hope for an endurable life in his homeland, Edwin walked and hitchhiked across Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, working for food and sleeping in ditches. In August 2000, he was apprehended as he tried to sneak into California. But he wasn't worried. "My whole life," he says, "I'd heard wonderful things about America and how children were treated there." Then the dream that had drawn Edwin Munoz so far north was crushed.

Sitting up straight in a white shirt and black tie, Edwin, now 16, tried not to cry at a recent hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He explained how, in shackles, he was shuffled between U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) facilities until he was taken to San Diego Juvenile Hall, which he called "the worst place I have ever been in my life." There, Edwin testified, he was locked in his cell 18 hours a day, beaten with sticks by authorities, doused with pepper spray and held among violent criminals for nearly six months. "I cried a lot in my cell," Edwin said, "wondering why everything was turning out so badly for me in the U.S. and if I would ever be free."

Lost in the system
Edwin's story is all too common. The INS says it placed more than 4600 foreign minors in detention last year. While the average age of the children in custody is 15, some are as young as 18 months. The largest group is Latin Americans caught crossing the Mexican border. But they come from as far away as China and Nigeria, apprehended at airports or on immigration sweeps, part of a rising tide of 20 million refugee children worldwide.

And though most are guilty of nothing more than entering America illegally, more than 30% of these children are incarcerated among violent criminals. Others are warehoused in minimum-security facilities while their childhoods tick away. Worst of all, many are deported without their claims for asylum ever being heard even if, like Edwin, they fled life-threatening abuse in their homelands.

What should happen to them?
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, and as Congress considers dismantling the INS altogether, what should happen to the children in its charge? Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) believes that, while we need to tighten our borders to prevent terrorists from entering our country illegally, we also must provide protections for helpless children. "We cannot continue to allow children who come to our country---often traumatized and guilty of no crime---to be held in jails and treated like criminals," she says.

Senator Feinstein became outraged when she learned about Phanupong Khaisri, a 2-year-old Thai child detained at the Los Angeles airport. Nicknamed "Got," the child had been drugged by human smugglers and used as a decoy to deceive airport authorities. Despite the fact that he'd been sold by his mother and faced danger if he returned to Thailand, the INS sought to deport Got. Senator Feinstein and others interceded.

In January 2001, Feinstein introduced the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act, which would wrest custody of these children away from the INS and create an Office of Children's Services to provide for their care. "I'm really hopeful we can correct this," says Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.), "because this just doesn't need to take place the way it is." Mark Matese, the INS's director of juvenile affairs until earlier this year, admits that the agency's treatment of the 500 or so children in its custody on any given day needs to be improved but points to the challenges.

"If these were Americans, we'd know who they were in hours," he says. "With these kids, it can take a lot longer to find out who they are. We want them to be safe, but we have a duty to make sure America is safe." During his testimony at the Senate hearing last February, Stuart Anderson, the INS's executive associate commissioner, contended that "the INS has made great strides in improving custody conditions for juveniles. But we can do more."

To Wendy Young of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, an advocacy group that assists asylum-seekers, it's inconceivable that the situation will improve until the INS is out of the picture completely. "By definition, the INS has a huge conflict of interest," says Young, who was an expert witness at the Senate hearings. "As a jailer and prosecutor, the INS is incapable of also looking out for the welfare of children."

"Are you my mommy?"
"As long as law-enforcement officers, rather than trained child-welfare workers, are in charge of these children, terrible mistakes will be made," says Christina Kleiser of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. She points to the case of one of her clients, a Nigerian girl named Fega who was arrested at age 7 when she arrived alone at New York's Kennedy Airport with a fake passport. Her mother, an illegal alien, was too afraid of being deported to claim her.

For the next 15 months, Fega was marooned at an INS shelter on the outskirts of Miami. She picked up enough English to ask every woman who visited, "Are you my mommy?" A distant cousin ---a nursing-home administrator in Connecticut---offered to take Fega in as soon as she heard of her plight. Instead, the INS chose to hold Fega for two more months. "How can putting a child through an experience like that not scar her for life?" Kleiser asks. "Even the INS is smart enough to know that."

"No matter how weak or strong any of these kids' cases for asylum may be, the important thing is giving them the opportunity to be heard," says Andrew Morton, a lawyer who represents four Tanzanian teenagers. For eight months, Herry Kiegemwe, Fikiri Lusingo, Abraham Tembo and Anthony Lumumbo were warehoused in an INS facility in central Pennsylvania. In the U.S. legally, with valid visas for an international Boy Scout jamboree, the teens say they were detained after approaching a Washington, D.C., police officer and inquiring whether it was possible to turn their tourist visas into student visas.

At the facility, they lived in a dorm and attended classes but were not free to leave. "Before I came here, I knew America was a beautiful country, famous for human rights," Anthony says. "But I don't think America is doing justice to us." In March, the boys finally were moved together into foster care in the Midwest. Morton says a majority of the juveniles apprehended by the INS appear in immigration court without assistance of any kind. "I know of cases where toddlers have appeared in court unrepresented," he says. "How can you pretend to be concerned with kids' welfare when you send a scared child alone up against a pit-bull prosecutor?"

"Your worst days are behind you."
Back in the crowded Senate hearing room, tears trickled down Edwin Munoz's nose as he finished telling his story. He explained that he was speaking out "so that no other child will have to go through what I went through with the INS." In truth, that's up to people like the politicians at the hearing. The message Edwin traveled to deliver has now been heard loud and clear. And bipartisan pressure is building to break apart the INS and create an office equipped to deal with the needs of children.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.), clearly moved like everyone else in the room, told Edwin, "I hope the U.S.A. lives up to your dreams. Your worst days are behind you." And they are. Edwin won his asylum and now lives in Michigan with a foster family. Seeing him here at the heart of the American government, sitting proudly in his seat, it was clear how far he'd come from his days of desperate fear in Honduras and how far---now that he's safe and in school---he'll be able to go.
________________________________________________________________________________________

How You Can Help
If you'd like to support legislation designed to improve the INS's treatment of foreign children or would simply like more information about the subject, visit www.womenscommission.org. In the Take Action section, you'll find a letter ready to send to your Congressman. Also, click on "Prison Guard or Parent?" for the most in-depth study currently available on the INS's treatment of minors.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. © Parade 2002.