Mi camino
hacia residencia legal
Silvia Mata-MarĂn MA in Social Design
Maryland Institute College of Art 2015
Table of Contents Introduction .........................................................................................1 Context .................................................................................................5 Collaborative Research ..............................................................19 Intervention ......................................................................................25 Implementation and Evaluation ............................................39 Reflection on Social Design ....................................................41 Bibliography and References ...................................................44
100
1 Introduction
00 2
My personal connection to the existing social problem My arrival to the U.S. last year to start the MASD program coincided with what many called the “surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America on the border�. Growing up in Costa Rica I was familiar of the current social-economical and political situation of the neighboring countries in the region. Just before moving to Baltimore, I remember reading in one local newspaper about how immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras had grown exponentially in Costa Rica. However, I had no idea the scale of this problem until I got here and started seeing reports about how by the end of 2014 an expected 70-80,000 unaccompanied minors would enter the United States. I remember watching the news and reviewing articles and all of them told the same story about how a shocking unprecedented amount of children were being found along the border abandoned. Some reports in mainstream media were a little more insightful by roughly touching on some of the causes of why these kids were leaving their countries unaccompanied. People were really concerned about the strain these children would produce in an already broken immigration system. But nobody was really addressing the root issues about why this phenomenon was occurring.
This made me wonder about what would happen to all of these children in the U.S., would they get deported back home? Would they have a chance in staying here? And this is how I started developing my project.
3
Thesis Question How might we help unaccompanied minors1 from Central America2, who have viable claims for international protection3, understand the complex and disjointed immigration system4?
Unaccompanied minors are defined as children and youth under the age of 17 that enter the U.S. border without any legal guardian. Unaccompanied minors aren’t necessary orphaned or abandoned children; it just means that when they entered the country they did it without an adult that was responsible for them. 1
These immigrant children come from the Northern Triangle of Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. 2
Having claims for international protection means that child has a well-grounded fear of returning home for any number of reasons. 3
Every child that enters the U.S. illegally gets immediately charged with violating U.S. immigration laws and is placed in standard removal proceedings in immigration court, regardless of having claims for international protection. 4
4
Problem Definition
Evidence of Phenomenon
Unaccompanied minors from Central America who immigrate to the U.S. must navigate an immigration system that is geared toward deportation, regardless of having viable claims to protection under international law.
Around 58% of unaccompanied minors have viable claims for international protection, but only a very small percentage of those are expected to get some form of immigration relief that would grant them residence in the U.S.
The entire immigration process is designed in a way that it is disjointed, chaotic and has no regard of cultural and linguistic characteristics. This leads to unfair legal proceedings conducive to massive deportations for certain populations. All of the diverse barriers set in place in the immigration systems, especially for children, make up a system that is designed to overlook international protection claims.
Children with viable claims for international protection
Children that are granted immigration relief in the U.S.
Basically, the U.S. immigration system is so broken, it’s actually breaking international laws.
00 5
2 Context
00 6
Unaccompanied children along the border The phenomenon of unaccompanied minors immigrating to the United States is neither a recent one nor exclusive to children from one given country or region. During the 1980s, the number of children from Central America entering the United States increased; they were fleeing their countries that were plagued with civil wars. Since then a steady number of children from this region annually entered the U.S. through the U.S.-Mexico border. In past years, (before FY 2011) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers detained an average of 8,000 unaccompanied children along the border. The majority of these children came from Mexico with fewer coming from the region known as the ‘Northern Triangle’ of Central America—which consists of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. This trend shifted in FY 2011 when the number of children coming from the Central American region tripled from the previous year. In FY 2012, the number of Central American children reached 20,000, and for the first time surpassed the amount of Mexican children crossing the border. The summer of 2014 brought an unprecedented surge of unaccompanied minors to the U.S.; around 70,000 children mostly from the Northern Triangle of Central America immigrated without any kind of legal guardian. Although the amount of children started to decline during the second semester of 2014, experts believe that 2015 will also see a persistent increase of Central American unaccompanied minors arriving to the U.S. This is a pervasive problem that is affecting the entire region, according to the U.N High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), children for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are seeking refugee in other neighboring countries such as Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize. The region is experiencing the largest displacement movement it
has ever seen, where massive amounts of people are spreading out from the Northern Triangle. In the U.S. the number of Central American families arriving at the border has seen a proportional increase similar to the number of unaccompanied children. These massive displacement trends are symptoms of the current political, economical and social state of the northern region of Central America.
7
Unaccompanied minors from
MĂŠxico 16,114
13,724
11,768
13,974
2009
2010
2011
2012
3,304
4,444
3,933 10,146
Unaccompanied minors from
Central America
8
17,240
15,684
2013
2014
20,805
5,572
2015
(March 31)
9,802
51,705
9
What is displacing children from the Northern Triangle of Central America? Children and adults are immigrating from these countries because of a myriad of intricate reasons that make up the complex and turbulent landscape that characterizes that region. Violence is the most recurring and prime motivation for leaving. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are three of the five most dangerous countries in the world. According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Honduras had the world’s highest per-capita homicide rate in 2012, at 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people. El Salvador and Guatemala were fourth and fifth with a respective rate of 41.2 and 39.9 homicides per 100,000 people. To put these numbers in context, wartorn Democratic Republic of the Congo, from which nearly half a million refugees have fled the country, has a homicide rate of 28.3 per 100,00 people. Violence in the region is considered endemic and systemic and it is present in all spheres of the social realm. This violence arises from the diversification of criminal activities by transnational gangs and criminal organizations. In El Salvador, UNODC, estimated that in 2012 there were 323 gang members per 100,000 residents, for a total of 20,000 gang members nationwide. In Guatemala gang membership is estimated at 22,000 people and Honduras at 36,000. Gangs have strived in this region because the economic despair faced by the people living in these countries make them easy prays for gang recruitment. El Salvador has more than 13.5% people living in extreme poverty and 45% in poverty. Guatemala’s rates are 29.1% for people living in extreme poverty and 54.8% facing poverty. In Honduras’ 42.8% people live in extreme poverty and 67.4% live in poverty. With these rates, the Northern Triangle countries are among the world’s most economically and socially unequal.
In fact violence is so ubiquitous that, according to the report, Children on the Run, published by UNHCR (2014) of 404 unaccompanied children from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and El Salvador 58% of the these children “were forcibly displaced because they suffered or faced harms that indicated a potential or actual need for international protection.” Which basically means that more than half of these kids are eligible for asylum or other forms of immigration relief in the countries they are seeking refuge. Unaccompanied minors also considered poverty and family reunification as driving forces for immigrating. Nevertheless, violence is the primary cause, even among those who also refer to poverty and family reunification as reasons for fleeing their countries.
Who are these children? Before 2012, most of the children detained at the border were male and their age ranged from 14-17. In recent years the demographic started to shift: children under the age of 12 were now the fastest growing group of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border and almost half of them were female.
10
What is the United States’ responsibility with these unaccompanied minors? International protection obligations The United States has signed numerous international treaties that ensure the protection and safe passage of refugees. The 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol are the basis for the refugee and asylum program in the United States. According to UNHCR (2005): “Each State is responsible for ensuring that the rights of its citizens are respected. The need for international protection therefore only arises when this national protection is denied or is otherwise unavailable. At that point, the primary responsibility for providing international protection lies with the country in which the individual has sought asylum. All States have a general duty to provide international protection as a result of obligations based on international law, including international human rights law and customary international law. States that are parties to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and/or or its 1967 Protocol have obligations in accordance with the provisions of these instruments.“ In order to receive protection under these instruments, an individual must satisfy the definition of ‘refugee’ as stated by the 1951 Convention—“who is someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being prosecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. Nevertheless, this definition is somewhat narrow in the scope of the people it covers. Broader definitions of refugees can be found in the Cartagena Declaration (1884) or in the Organization of African Unity Convention (1969). However, there
are individuals that do not meet either definitions of refugee but are still in need of international protection. “In general, these are persons that are fleeing armed conflict, serious internal disorder, massive human rights violations, generalized violence or other forms of serious harm with no link to a refugee protection ground as contained in the international refugee definition.” (UNHCR:2014) An asylee is a refugee that whose case was determined inside the country in which the individual has required asylum. UNHCR (2014) found that that 48% of the 404 unaccompanied minors interviewed “shared experiences of how they had been personally affected by the augmented violence in the region by organized armed criminal actors, including drug cartels and gangs or by State actors.” Youth suffers from targeted violence since recruitment for the gangs start at adolescence. They are also persecuted and beaten by police members who suspect gang membership. In the same survey, 21% of the children claimed that they had survived abuse and violence in their homes by their caretakers. So both patterns, violence by organized criminal actors and violence in the home, are prevailing types of harm that raise potential needs of international protection. The spike of violence that is permeating the entire region has led the United Nations to call for international protection and it has often been referred as a humanitarian crisis similar to displacement caused by war.
11
What happens to these children after crossing the United States’ Border? Most unaccompanied minors are encountered along the border. Here they are apprehended and initially detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Once apprehended, they are immediately charged with violating U.S. immigration laws and are placed in standard removal proceedings in immigration court. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2008, unaccompanied minors from non-neighboring countries cannot be placed into expedited removal proceedings. This responds to the concern that children were not being properly screened for eligibility for protection or relief in the U.S. The CBP conducts a first screening to determine whether the child is eligible for asylum. The child is asked by an officer to recount past traumas such as gang recruitments, sexual abuse, forced labor and kidnappings. Within 72 hours of being apprehended the CBP must transfer custody of the children to Health and Human Services (HHS). Kids are put in a shelter, usually run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), that might be in a different state from where they were apprehended, until HHS can locate and fingerprint their sponsor—who is usually, but not necessarily, a relative who agrees to take care of the minor and provide a safe environment to live. After the child is released to the care of the sponsor, he must still attend all the immigration court appointments that get scheduled in the state their sponsor resides. More than 90% of the unaccompanied minors have a sponsor within the United States. Those who immigrate by themselves and have no one in the country to look after them have to remain in the ORR shelters until they get placed in foster care. They will
remain in the system during the entire length of the removal proceedings. In the case the child gets granted to stay in the country, he or she will be placed in a more permanent arrangement.
12
VERA (2012), The Flow of Unaccompanied Children Through the Immigration System
13
Why is the immigration system not working for these children? The immigration system in the United States is so complex and disjointed that it’s almost impossible for a child to properly navigate. There are so many federal agencies involved, different possible outcomes, moving the child from one state to another, that it is a mazelike process. Through my research, I have found that there are numerous barriers for children, but I would like to point out the five I uncovered that seem to be the most determinant in the success of getting immigration relief for minors:
Apprehension and detention According to the UNHCR, children “should in principle not be detained at all” and if used, it should be only a measure of last resort and should be inflicted for the shortest appropriate period of time. During recent years, detention times have been increase proportionally to the number of children coming into the country. The mandated 72 hours of initial detainment by CBP often times gets extended indefinitely until CBP is able to screen the child to see if he or she has a credible fear of returning to their home country. This practice has been openly criticized; NGOs that work with this population have expressed concern that the CBP is not the right agency to be conducting screenings and interviews looking for signs of trauma, persecution or abuse. Detention has been studied and it is well known that it causes negative effects on children’s mental and physical development; and might induce anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and cause long-term cognitive damage.
The time a child should be place in shelters until their sponsor is found is also a questionable practice. Under the TVPRA of 2008 these children should be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child while waiting to locate their sponsor. This process takes in average 35 days, however, there have been reports of children waiting up to 6 months in shelters. These children have endured significant trauma, whether in their home countries or during the journey they underwent to get to the U.S. Placing them in detention and keeping them away from their sponsors is proven to negatively affect their well-being and add further trauma.
14
4
3
2 1
1
4 138 days
Amount of time it took one child to get reunited with her sponsor
15
Legal representation is a “privilege”. Children and adults facing deportation are not provided with government-appointed attorneys. Since immigration proceedings are civil matters and not penal, there are no legislations that guarantee that every child appearing in court will be represented by a lawyer. More than half of the minors will have to undergo deportation proceedings by themselves and will have to build their own case without any legal representation. For an unrepresented child it is nearly impossible to navigate the immigration system. The child’s immaturity and previous trauma, unawareness of his legal rights, lack of capacity to understand a very complex legal system, and most importantly, the lack of knowledge of the English language add up and make this process a disjointed and unfeasible maze. There are several types of relief children could potentially qualify for depending on the circumstances that drove them out of their home countries: Asylum, Special immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), U visas and T visas. While asylum is the form of relief most of these children have a legitimate claim to, it is one of the most legally complex to obtain even with a lawyer. The application process starts with filling out a nine-page long form entirely in English; attorneys and communitybased organizations might help out with this but the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) does not provide any type of assistance as it would present a conflict of interest. A large network of pro-bono and volunteer providers has responded to this humanitarian crisis, but there are not enough to meet the need. Most of these lawyers
have little or no experience in immigration matters, they might have not worked with children before and most of them are not bilingual. Meanwhile, the DHS— which acts as the prosecutor in immigration court and advocates for the child’s deportation— has a lawyer trained in immigration law in every case. Organizations like KIND (Kids in Need of Defense) has created a nation-wide platform of pro-bono and volunteer lawyers that are willing to offer legal services free of charge to the minors. Liz Shield, director of KIND in Baltimore, has stated that one of the goals of KIND is not only to match children in need of representation with lawyers but also train these attorneys—whom might have their practice in other kinds of law—in immigration law.
Language barrier It is important to consider that most of these children are among the poorest in their countries, so their knowledge in reading and writing Spanish is already very limited. This only accentuates the communication barrier in English. The lack of knowledge of English is especially detrimental to children that must face the immigration proceedings alone. But the language barrier also affects negatively children that have legal representation. Most lawyers are not necessarily bilingual and if they have some knowledge of Spanish it might not be enough to maintain a proper channel of communication between the child and himself. Organizations like KIND have to face another challenge: recruiting volunteer interpreters and matching them with lawyers. Ideally all interpreters should be professional ones and should have experience in legal matters and knowledge of
16
specialized language concerning immigration, however, just as there aren’t enough lawyers to cover all the unaccompanied minors, the number of interpreters is not sufficient to ensure that all of these children and lawyers have the assistance of an interpreter. While lawyers try to carry on the same case from beginning to end, this is not necessarily the case with interpreters. It is difficult to retain the same interpreter throughout the entire length of an immigration process that can take up to a year or more. This can cause problems with the child and lawyer as it might provoke lack of trust and lost of rapport.
Child-sensitive approaches When dealing with children; age, maturity, vulnerability, psychological state and other factors relating to the child’s development and ability to identify and narrate complex events and intertwined aspects of their lives must be taken into account. According to UNHCR (2014): “Children cannot be expected to provide adult-like accounts of situations they have faced and may have difficulty articulating their fears. They may be too young or immature to be able to evaluate what information is important or to interpret and convey what they have witnessed or experienced in a manner that is easily understandable to an adult. (…) Older children may also provide superficial or even artificial about experiences or events that were harmful or traumatizing.” This is why lawyers should be familiar with childsensitive approaches in order to extract accurate and reliable information that builds a case for an asylum
claim. These approaches are used to build rapport and increase trust and confidence in the lawyer and the immigration process. This is a time-consuming and difficult process to carry out, and it is even more complex when lawyers have no experience working with children and by adding language barriers and intercultural communication it becomes an incredibly complex task.
Accelerated processing The overwhelming increase of illegal immigrants the United States has brought the immigration system almost to a complete collapse. The unprecedented amount of immigrants from Central America, adults and children, has completely flooded the shelters, detention facilities, immigration courts. Because of this, accelerated processing is being use to try to free the backlog in the system that might take several years to resolve. This is awakening a fear that illegal immigration concerns could trump the Unites States’ international obligations to protect those with a grounded fear of returning to their home countries. Asylum claims take a long time to establish because of the sensitive nature of the narrative the defendant has to articulate to build a solid case. Accelerated processing could cause judges to easily overlook claims for asylum in order to expedite the backlog.
00
So many problems‌
00
where to begin?
00 19
3 Collaborative Research
00 20
After doing my initial research I was shocked to see how many parts of the system was stacked against immigrant children. So I decided to start talking to the people that provide direct services to these children, who were mostly lawyers, about what was actually happening to these children.
Organizations in Baltimore In Baltimore there are a number of organizations that work providing pro-bono legal aid to unaccompanied minors and their sponsors. I connected to KIND, The Immigration Rights Clinic of The University of Baltimore, The Esperanza Center, and World Relief Baltimore Immigration Legal Clinic. I interviewed lawyers that were working with unaccompanied minors in building their case for asylum of other forms of immigration relief. All of them talked about the difficulties they had building rapport with the child in order to build a truthful and solid claims for their case. They also struggled trying to explain how the legal component of the immigration process worked and the differences between the different forms of immigration relief. Depending on their case, unaccompanied minors, are eligible for one of these: Asylum, Special Immigration Juvenile Status (SIJS), U-Visa or T-Visa.
According to the lawyers I interviewed (which were 8 in total), they often times struggle to understand the complexity of the legal process for each immigration relief form. Only around third of the children actually have legal representation, which means that thousands of children and their sponsors have to figure out the process by themselves. This seems almost impossible to do, and in fact it probably is, which means that a huge percentage of children will not go through the due process and will remain living in the U.S. illegally. This will undoubtedly bring a myriad of social problems to these children as they start integrating into their new communities. The lawyers also shared their concerns about children and sponsor having a great deal of distrust to the entire system. Sponsors that have lived in this country for some time have developed this distrust through experiences and having to adjust to life in their communities as they find recurrent barriers that prevent them from integrating wholly in their new homes. Children have a great distrust towards the immigration process because since they crossed the border they fell into a system that from the beginning was puzzling and alienating.
21
Unaccompanied Children - Sponsors By State
According to the federal government, the number of children fleeing violence in Central America is expected to grow to 60,000 in 2014. The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has indicated 92% of the children who have arrived in the U.S. originated from three countries that have been hit hardest by drug related violence — El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. ORR is tasked with all placement decisions for these children while they move through the immigration process prescribed by law. According to ORR, 85% of all children seeking refuge will be placed with relatives. ORR data released in July 2014 showing Maryland has the highest number of children per capita of any state, and is one of five states that comprise 50% of children placed in U.S. to date. When combined with Virginia and the District of Columbia, this represents 15% of children placed. County level data has not been released.
January 1st to August 31st STATE
NUMBER OF UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN
Alabama
634
STATE Louisiana Maine
NUMBER OF UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN 1,414 9
STATE Oklahoma
NUMBER OF UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN 284
Alaska
4
Oregon
96
Arizona
218
Maryland
3,248
Pennsylvania
513
Arkansas
250
Massachusetts
1,115
Puerto Rico
1
California
4,680
Michigan
154
Rhode Island
173
Colorado
336
Minnesota
240
South Carolina
491
Connecticut
455
Mississippi
238
South Dakota
Delaware
168
Missouri
173
Tennessee
1,020
District of Columbia
301
Montana
1
Texas
6,217
Florida
4,392
Nebraska
278
Utah
103
Georgia
1,623
Nevada
188
Vermont
3
Hawaii
8
New Hampshire
28
Virgin Islands
1
Idaho
15
New Jersey
2,171
Illinois
437
New Mexico
32
Washington
310
Indiana
357
New York
4,799
West Virginia
20
Iowa
196
North Carolina
1,648
Wisconsin
73
Kansas
246
North Dakota
4
Wyoming
8
Kentucky
333
Ohio
489
Virginia
31
3,193
Total
43,419
Source: HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement
Maryland Department of Human Resources Updated 09/22/14
22
Talking to the children Through these organizations I was able to connect with children that were living in Baltimore with their sponsors. It is important to know that Maryland actually was a huge population of these kids that is invisibilized, in fact last year around 3,500 of these children were sent to live with their sponsors in Maryland while they await the results of the legal process of their immigration status, which can take years. This made Maryland the fifth state with the highest population of unaccompanied minors and makes it the highest number of children per capita of any state. Through direct informal interviews, all in Spanish, I got a sense from the child’s experience of what is was like to be detained by different Federal Institutions like the Department of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and the Foster Care system. I found that most of them had undergone a permanent state of uncertainty and emotional instability as a result of not understanding how the system worked and why they were being held regardless of having family members in the country. Children would describe that while in detention they were put in overcrowded shelters, having to sleep in shifts because there weren’t enough cots, freezing conditions, not being properly fed, being denied phone calls, not understanding why they couldn’t go live with their families, among many others. All of these factors plus the previous traumatic experiences they might have undergone makes navigating the system an extremely frustrating experience adding more stress. These interviews made me realize that during the time the child was detained, not only basic human rights were being overlooked, but information that was
both age appropriate and culturally sensitive was not accessible to them so they didn’t realize they had any rights. The complexity of the system, moving one child from one place to another, even across states made them experience a state of permanent anxiety due to a lack of understanding of why these things happened.
In order to create an environment where children would feel comfortable sharing with me extremely sensitive life stories, I did not use any form of documentation that would produce discomfort, for this reason there are no photographs of these sessions. I am including the story of Elena and her mom Blanca. This interview was conducted on February 22, 2015 at their residence in Dundalk. Baltimore. Respecting her wish to stay anonymous, all of the names have been changed. This interview was done in Spanish entirely and I have made my best effort to keep the story as accurate as possible regarding dates and facts as I had to translate it.
23 00
Elena’s story Elena is 17-years-old and she now lives in Baltimore City. But she was born in a small village outside of San Salvador, and until two years ago, she lived there with her elderly grandmother. Elena survived on the money her mother, Blanca—who moved to the U.S. 12 years ago—sent her every month. She went to school, had friends, and was happy. She was aware that her village had grown increasingly dangerous in recent years because of gang activity, but she kept to herself and was cautious. One day, when Elena was 15-years-old, she was walking back from school with her female cousin when a neighbor boy they both knew well mugged them. Elena gave the boy what little money she had for the remainder of the week. Elena’s cousin didn’t have any money to give. That day, Elena watched as her cousin was raped and murdered. The boy warned her that if she didn’t have money the next time he saw her, or if she told anyone what she saw, then she would face the same fate. When Blanca learned what happened to her daughter, she paid a coyote $5000 to smuggle Elena into the U.S. Elena is one of the fortunate children who survived what is one of the most dangerous journeys, crossing the Northern Triangle of Central America and Mexico. Over the summer of 2012, she traveled on foot, by bus, by riding on top of freight trains, and she managed to arrive at the U.S. border where her coyote ditched her, a common practice among smugglers. There is a growing misconception that children do not get deported, so the coyotes abandon children once they reach the border. Her smuggler knew the spot well and how often the authorities patrolled it. He told Elena to stay put and wait to be found. Other immigrants had also warned her that wandering in the desert under the incinerating sun most likely would kill her. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) found Elena along the desert border of Texas. She was alone and had spent four hours waiting in the exact place she where she had been dropped, Children from Central America and Mexico crossing the border without a guardian are not a new trend, in fact this is a phenomenon that has been escalading over the past decade and has grown exponentially since 2012 as the political and socio-economical situation in these countries rapidly deteriorate. During the summer of 2014, the situation swelled to unprecedented proportions: nearly 70,000 unaccompanied minors flooded the southern border of the United States. After being picked up at the border, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) placed Elena in detention for a week—even though the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has mandated that children “should in principle not be detained at all” and if used, it should be only a measure of last resort and should be inflicted for the shortest appropriate period of time. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, the current U.S. legislation that these children fall under, clearly states that children should not be held in detention for more than 72 hours while they get screened to determine whether or not the child has a credible fear of returning to his or her home countries. Elena came to the U.S. during the 2012 flood of children. That year 24,120 unaccompanied minors crossed the border— almost double from the previous year—and it was the first time the immigration system was stressed because of the massive volume of children entering with viable claims for international protection. That’s the reason why Elena’s 72 hours became more like 160 in an overcrowded facility lacking resources to properly lodge all of the children. Elena had to sleep during three-hour shifts in cots she shared with at least four other kids; she was served two meals a day that consisted mostly of stale bologna sandwiches. During her stay she wasn’t allowed to call her mom and let her know she had arrived to the country. Elena had last talked to her mother from Guatemala, while in the midst of her two and half months escape from El Salvador to Texas.
00 24
The massive influx of children from Mexico and Central America stunned the immigration system. The backlog can only be partly attributed to the volume of immigrants. The already broken system was pushed to the verge by the unprecedented amount of people that came to the border with solid claims for international protection like asylum. Under international law, the country has the obligation to give asylum-seekers a fighting chance to present their case and be considered for immigration relief. The system in place does have this consideration built in, which is the reason Central American children don’t get immediately deported. Nevertheless, the immigration system was not designed to accommodate asylum-seekers and was definitely not intended for children. This overload in the system resulted in overcrowded detention facilities: unsanitary living conditions, insufficient food and extended amounts of time in detention as Homeland Security was incapable of processing children and families. Blanca, Elena’s mom, waited more than two months for news of her daughter. Blanca had spent every single day since Elena left El Salvador thinking about all the dreadful stories she heard from her neighbors and friends about what children, specially girls, endure during the journey. When she finally got the call letting her know that Elena was under the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), Blanca felt a rush of content that she had never experience before. She feared her daughter could be dead and she would never find out what happened to her. Blanca, overcome with relief, mistakenly thought she was going to have Elena returned to her custody immediately. This was, after all, her daughter. Blanca had no idea that it would take another five months until Elena would be released. Elena spent the first three months in a detention shelter for children in Texas. It resembled a barracks, with long, narrow rooms and dozens of cots lining the walls. Elena tried on several occasions to call her mother and she was denied permission every single time. Meanwhile, Blanca, who lived in Baltimore, was struggling to fill out the many official forms needed for her daughter’s release, all of them available only in English. Even though Blanca had been living in the U.S. for 12 years, she resided in mainly Hispanic communities where her knowledge of the English language had been reduced to the occasional exchange between her and the customers at the Chick-a-fillet where she worked. The amount paperwork was not only confusing to Blanca, it was impossible to understand and fill out in English. The amount of time it took Blanca to figure the procedures to get her daughter released, meant that Elena was sent into transitional foster care. She was transferred into a group home in Virginia and was in the midst of foster care placement, even though her mother lived one state away. Blanca drove from Baltimore to Virginia as soon as she got notice of her daughter’s new whereabouts. She got to see Elena for the first time in over 12 years. Their reunion, which should have been ecstatic, was overshadowed by Elena’s frustration and discontent toward her mother. Elena had heard over and over again that she had to stay in the custody of ORR because her mom had not filled out the papers or gone through the due process for her release. This had inevitably instilled a deep resentment toward her mother. Elena was finally released two months after Blanca’s visit. She now lives with her mother, her stepdad, and two younger stepbrothers outside of Baltimore City. It has been more than two years since she entered this country, but her status is still in question. Elena is still going through the legal process of getting asylum.
00 25
4 Intervention
00 26
Theory of Change If we provide information that is both age appropriate and culturally sensitive to children from Central America about the immigration process, they might find the system less adversarial and empower them to follow through the entire process fostering a better possible outcome in their immigration status.
27
Process After doing all of my research and gathering insights from lawyers, children and other direct service providers I realized that there was a desperate need for creating information resources that kids could actually understand. If a child doesn’t understand the system he or she is going to be easily frustrated and is probably not going to follow through the entire process even if having valid claims for international protection and U.S. has a responsibility of ensuring them protection. Creating accessible information for them could create familiarity between the child and the system in a way that closes the gap between the child’s capacities of navigating the system to how the system actually works. I started creating a visual language that simple, familiar and wasn’t reliant of written language. This last consideration came from understanding the audience for which the visual language was intended. These children ages’ range from 4 to 17: most of them don’t speak English at all, a large percentage of them have very low literacy skills even in Spanish and some of them only speak Mayan dialects. I also considered the fact the most of these children don’t have any kind of familiarity with existing icons and symbols, that are frequently used to graphically depict and simplify
information. This approach would also be unsuccessful to properly communicate to this audience and could create some sort of distance between the information and the child. At first I started creating a visual language that would be completely illustrated and appropriate for children. This visual language could be used in posters and other traditional graphic materials.
28
29
Children as visual storytellers However, as I developed these visuals, it occurred to me that there was a possibility of creating a shared visual language in collaboration with the kids. And I started thinking about how to make the material more interactive in a way that it could collect child’s experiences while informing them of the process.
Visual storytelling as a form of collecting insights By using visual storytelling generated by children, we can discover new insights of how the system works from the child’s perspective and its repercussions on their emotional well-being without language barriers that would normally inhibit these children from speaking out.
30
31
Insights that can be used to understand how the system is intentionally alienating children I shared the initial sketches and concept with my community partner The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and with their collaboration we developed a foldout booklet named Mi camino para residencia legal (My path to getting legal residence). This is a printed material where the child can find information and familiarize him or herself with the overall immigration system while recording their own experiences. By facilitating a space where the child can interact with the poster it creates a dual intention: one more personal, where each child can use it as an emotional outlet; the other purpose of this booklet is collecting and analyzing shared experiences between kids to understand what part of the system is especially affecting the child’s well-being.
Along with Mi camino para residencia legal, I designed a “Know your rights” poster intended for Customs and Border Patrol detention facilities, the first point of entry of children into the immigration system. This poster uses the same visual language to depict the conditions children can except when they are placed in detention. Since immigration rights are deeply political issue, the language the poster used had to be approved by the Department of Homeland Security. We couldn’t actually use a “Know your Rights” tittle because that would imply that children’s right were being overlooked by DHS, which is actually true. So we reframed it to “What can you expect while in detention”, but this also seem very passive. A child should expect basic humans rights, but in the case these were denied, he or she should also be entitled to demand them. So we ended up settling for “What can you ask for during detention”. The illustrations were created in a way that even if there is a language barrier between the Custom and Border Patrol Officer and the child, he or she can easily point out the thing (food, blanket, toilet, shower, etc.) he or she needs. Paired to the poster, children will receive a postcardsize version of it and on the back a very simple survey where they can register what they actually received during their time there. Creating access to information is empowering itself but we wanted to make sure the child had the possibility of holding DHS accountable if they were denied any rights. This poster was designed along members of different NGOs working with CBP to improve detention conditions of immigrants; among them are LIRS, KIND, American Civil Liberties Union, Detention Watch Network, UNHCR and Just Detention.
32
33
Final Designs
34
00
00
37
38
00 39
5 Implementation and Evaluation
40 00
Implementation Mi camino para residencia legal will be piloted by LIRS in the upcoming weeks and they plan to implement it as soon as possible. The partnership with LIRS was especially important because this organization is not only able to circulate the material in the different stages of the immigration process, it is also prepared to provide group counseling using the experiences recorded in the booklet to reflect about the child’s feelings, with the existent staff they have. Since LIRS is a second tier organization that oversees and coordinates direct service providers, they are also going to start training these more local organizations to use these materials. They are also planning to collect individual experiences to and analyze share experiences among children to extract valuable data that can support their existent advocacy efforts about improving immigrant conditions in detention facilities operated by DHS. The poster is currently being evaluated by the NGOCBP liaison and is undergoing a few changes. CBP has expressed interest in implementing it soon and they would cover the costs of printing and distributing the poster to all of their detention facilities.
Barriers The discussion around immigration rights is a deeply political issue, a big barrier in the implementation of these materials is the perception of federal institutions like the Department of Homeland Security. This is why it was important to create something that could fall into already existing advocacy and immigration rights movements.
The scale of the project is also an important barrier; it would have been extremely difficult for me to coordinate from Baltimore implementation of the graphic materials in the detention facilities located in the Southern States. Again, the only way I could do this is by partnering with established organizations that have nationwide infrastructure.
Next Steps The next steps for this project would be collecting and gathering the children’s experiences once they have gone through the process. These subjective experiences can be interpreted and translated into qualitative data that cold foster a stronger advocacy efforts about improving immigrant conditions in detention facilities operated by DHS and ORR. Through this data we are able to find new insights from the child’s perspective about what is not working in the system and come up with future interventions aimed to improve the conditions children undergo throughout the process. Another important next step would be to gather more methodically experiences from children that have already gone through the process and compare these to the ones children are experiencing currently in detention.
41
6 Reflection on Social Design
42
This project was created in collaboration with different stakeholders: local and nationwide organizations, lawyers that work directly with unaccompanied minors and children that have undergone or currently going through the immigration system. My role was to facilitate these conversations, gather the different perspectives and distilled them into concrete needs. As a designer, I was able to produce a graphic outcome that would address the lack of information provided to these children. By having a deep understanding on the demographic and as a person coming from Costa Rica with a shared background and language with kids from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, I was able to understand the barriers children face trying to decipher the process. The outcome of this project was only possible after an extensive phase of deep research and engagement on the issue. Using a human-centered approach I was able to design graphic materials that are very specific to the needs of this population. I believe the innovative component of my project arrives from using a product that can address various needs at the same time. These graphic materials while informing and helping the child navigate the immigration system. Access to information is by itself empowering. By making the materials interactive, we are creating a process of co-design where the child actively participates and provides insights about how the system works. These can be used to design future social design projects that have the capacity of transforming the system to be more just and dignified.
43
44
Bibliography and References American Immigration Council (2014). Children in Danger. A guide to the humanitarian challenge at the border. Retrieved from: www.immigrationpolicy.org Customs and Border Protection (2015). Southwest Border Unaccompanied Alien Children. Retrieved from: http://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwestborder-unaccompanied-children KIND (2014). A treacherous journey: child migrants navigating the U.S. immigration system. Retrieved from: https://www.supportkind.org/ KIND (2013). Understanding and addressing the protection of immigrant children who come alone to the United States. Retrieved from: https://www. supportkind.org/ Maryland Department of Human Resources. http:// www.dhr.state.md.us/blog/?page_id=12148 Newland, K. (2014). What is the right policy toward unaccompanied children at U.S. borders? Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved from: http://www. migrationpolicy.org/news/what-right-policy-towardunaccompanied-children-us-borders Roubein, R. (July 15, 2014). Here’s how hard it is for unaccompanied minors to get asylum. National Journal. Retrieved from: http://www.nationaljournal. com/domesticpolicy/here-s-how-hard-it-is-forunaccompanied-minors-to-get-asylum-20140715 UNHCR (2009). Guidelines on International Protection: Child Asylum Claims under Articles 1(A)2 and 1(F) of the 1951 Convention and/or 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. Retrieved from: http://www.unhcr.org/50ae46309.html
UNHCR (2014). Children on the run. Unaccompanied children leaving Central America and Mexico and the need for international protection. Retrieved from: http://unhcrwashington.org/children VERA. Institute of Justice (2012). The Flow of Unaccompanied Children Through the Immigration System. A Resource for Practitioners, Policy Makers, and Researchers. Retrieved from: http://www.vera. org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/the-flowof-unaccompanied-children-through-the-immigrationsystem.pdf Wolgin, P.E. and Kelley, A.M. (June 18, 2014). 5 things you need to know about unaccompanied children. Center for American Progress. Retrieved from: https:// www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/ news/2014/06/18/92056/5-things-you-need-to-knowabout-the-unaccompanied-minors-crisis/