A8
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THuRSDAY, JANuARY 3, 2019
Young immigrants seeking refuge face denials
benefits they are eligible
for.”
By AMY TAXIN and
DEEPTI HAJELA
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES —
Some immigrant youth
looking to start over in the
United States after fleeing
abusive homes are seeing
their applications for green
cards rejected because the
Trump administration says
they’re too old.
A U.S. government pro-
gram in place since 1990
has let young immigrants
subject to abuse, abandon-
ment or neglect by a par-
ent seek a court-appointed
guardian and a green card to
stay in the country.
While applicants must
file paperwork before age
21, the Trump administra-
tion has said some are too
old to qualify once they turn
18, prompting a flurry of
denial notices over the past
year in New York, Texas
and California and addi-
tional questions of appli-
cants in New Jersey.
Immigrant
advocates
have filed lawsuits in New
York and California and
said hundreds of young peo-
ple could be affected by the
change.
“This administration is
literally going after some
of the most vulnerable peo-
ple trying to seek relief,”
said Mary Tanagho Ross,
an appellate staff attorney
at Los Angeles-based Public
Counsel’s immigrant rights
project.
The Trump adminis-
tration has been push-
ing to harden the U.S. bor-
der and slash immigration
with a series of steps tar-
geting Central American
children who arrive on the
border alone or with rela-
tives. Former Attorney Gen-
eral Jeff Sessions sought to
make it tougher for young
immigrants fleeing gangs
or domestic violence to win
asylum — though some
guidance he issued on such
cases was recently blocked
by a federal judge. And the
U.S. government has been
slower to release immigrant
children caught on the bor-
‘Arbitrary and
capricious’
AP Photo/Brynn Anderson
Immigrant children walk in a line outside the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, a former Job Corps
site that now houses them in Homestead, Fla.
der to family in the country.
The program is the best
chance for many of the
thousands of young immi-
grants arriving on the border
to be allowed to stay in the
U.S. Under U.S. law, they
can apply for green cards
once a designated court in
the U.S. state where they
live assigns them a guardian
and declares they are eligi-
ble to apply.
Fled parents
A
now-22-year-old
woman in Northern Cali-
fornia, who requested ano-
nymity out of fear the U.S.
government will retali-
ate against her for speak-
ing out, fled her Mexican
immigrant parents’ home in
high school after her father
repeatedly beat her.
She was taken in by a
teacher, who helped her
get started in college and
took care of her when she
was diagnosed with can-
cer. When a judge formally
named the teacher her legal
guardian it was a huge
relief, she said. But she
later learned the U.S. gov-
ernment wouldn’t accept
the court’s order for her
green card application. She
dropped to the floor and
sobbed, she said.
“I just couldn’t believe I
was going to have to try to
defend myself again,” she
said. “I don’t refer to her by
her name or that she’s my
guardian — I just call her
mom.”
More than 50,000 young
immigrants have obtained
green cards by qualifying
for special immigrant juve-
nile status since 2010. The
overwhelming
majority
of applications have been
approved by U.S. Citizen-
ship and Immigration Ser-
vices, making the program
a safer bet for many immi-
grant children seeking ref-
uge in the United States
than pleading a case before
an immigration officer or
judge for asylum.
Applications to the pro-
gram have surged in recent
years, rising more than
threefold between the 2014
and 2017 fiscal years, fed-
eral data shows. During that
time, the number of denials
also increased, with 2,000
applications rejected over
the past two fiscal years —
more than all of the previ-
ous seven years combined.
The change was most
notable in the nine months
ending in June, when 1 in
5 applications that were
decided were denied, the
data shows. About 7 per-
cent of application deci-
sions in the 2017 fiscal year
and 4 percent of decisions
in the 2016 fiscal year were
denials.
The U.S. government
started reviewing applica-
tions at a centralized loca-
tion in late 2016 to improve
efficiency. The follow-
ing year, U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services
sought legal guidance from
the agency’s Office of Chief
Counsel for cases involv-
ing immigrant children who
turned 18 before their paper-
work had been completed
and determined that a state
court order is only valid if
that court has the author-
ity to reunite children with
their parents, which many
don’t, according to agency
officials.
As a result, 260 cases
were denied, they said, add-
ing that the agency may
have previously approved
some cases that it should
not have.
Immigration
officials
said they could not com-
ment on pending litigation,
but said the agency “con-
tinues to ensure that chil-
dren who have been abused,
abandoned or neglected
receive the humanitarian
Beth Krause, supervis-
ing attorney of the immi-
grant youth project at Legal
Aid in New York, said the
federal immigration agency
doesn’t have the authority to
question state law, which in
New York expressly allows
courts to issue guardian-
ship orders to cover this age
group.
“USCIS changed their
policy and they changed
their policy in a way that
is arbitrary and capricious
because it doesn’t comport
with the federal statute”
that says young people have
until age 21, said Krause,
who is representing young
immigrants in the New York
filing. “They’re getting it
wrong.”
In California, a federal
judge has blocked the U.S.
government from deny-
ing the young immigrants’
cases for now. The state
enacted a law several years
ago expressly allowing pro-
bate courts to issue orders
for immigrants who are
between 18 and 21 so they
can apply to participate in
the federal program.
In response to the Trump
administration’s changes,
immigrant advocates said
they are also changing how
they try to help these young
applicants. Often, attorneys
are looking into alternative
ways to get these youth on
stable legal footing in the
United States, for example,
applying for asylum in addi-
tion to special immigrant
juvenile status, said Priya
Konings, deputy director
of legal services at Kids in
Need of Defense.
“It is just creating extra
work for us — which is fine
—but overburdening an
already almost broken sys-
tem,” Konings said. “It’s
incredibly obvious that the
administration is targeting
immigrants at large, par-
ticularly
unaccompanied
minors, and they’re doing it
on every front.”
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