(NAME-MCE) Child Watch: Immigration Enforcement--Raiding Children's Dreams

Fri Aug 22 10:08:10 EDT 2008

Child Watch(R) Column
By Marian Wright Edelman

Immigration Enforcement—Raiding Children's Dreams

On May 12, 2008, teachers in Postville, Iowa, interrupted their
classes, called the names of some of their Latino students and
directed them to report to the principal's office. Usually, this would
mean that they were in for punishment for some infraction. But these
children had done nothing wrong. In the principal's office, they were
informed that one or, in some cases, both of their parents would not
be coming home because they had been taken into custody by federal law
enforcement officers.

Earlier that day, hundreds of helmeted Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agents in combat gear, toting assault rifles,
swooped down on the Agriprocessors kosher meat processing plant in
this town of about 3,000. With military precision, nearly 400 of the
plant's alleged undocumented immigrant workers were shackled and
marched out of the slaughterhouse in single file and herded onto buses
and vans. Those rounded up in the raid, one of the biggest in our
nation's history, were transported to detention facilities miles away.

The raid not only economically devastated the town but also left in
its trail hundreds of children wondering when or even if they would
see their parents again. Postville was just one of a series of ICE
raids in search of undocumented immigrants. According to a report by
the National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute, "Paying the
Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children," there
are about five million children in the United States with at least one
undocumented parent. The stepped-up ICE raids have put the children of
these families at increased risk of separation, psychological distress
and economic hardship.

These raids have disrupted communities across the country and
separated thousands of parents from their children. The majority of
these children are American citizens who are integrated into the
schools and communities of the only country they know. After the
arrest or disappearance of their parents, children have experienced
psychological duress and developed mental health problems including
feelings of abandonment, separation anxiety disorder, depression and
post-traumatic stress disorder.

The "Paying the Price" report states that the raids affect children,
who are "emotionally, financially and developmentally dependent on
their parents' care, protection and earnings." Children and other
family members left behind face serious and immediate economic
hardships when the primary breadwinner has been hauled off into
custody. The majority of the children affected are under the age of
10—many are infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Their immediate needs
are for food, baby formula, diapers, clothing and other essentials.

One of the great challenges for the communities where raids are
carried out is to ensure that no child has been left behind in school,
left at home without adult supervision or taken into foster care. Some
children have been left in the care of teenagers or even babysitters
for weeks and months at a time.

Actions to charge, convict and deport undocumented workers have
escalated. In 2006, ICE officials chose December 12, the Our Lady of
Guadalupe feast-day, an important religious holiday for the Mexican
community, to launch simultaneous raids on Swift & Company meat
packing plants in six states. On that one day, ICE agents arrested
nearly 1,300 Swift employees. ICE is not only engaged in large-scale
raids, but it is also expanding door-to-door operations with
deportation orders to arrest immigrants. The knock on the door by an
ICE agent can be the beginning of a nightmare for thousands of
children.

Undocumented workers are being charged as serious criminals for using
false Social Security numbers and being threatened with serious jail
time. With little access to court-appointed lawyers, many of them
waive their rights without understanding the seriousness of the
charges against them. Within two weeks, federal prosecutors extract
guilty pleas in a procedure that could eliminate the worker's
prospects of future relief and imposes criminal sentences and removal
orders simultaneously—at once sending a breadwinner to prison and
thrusting his family into poverty, giving new meaning to what it is to
be "railroaded."

I agree with many of the recommendations in the "Paying the Price"
report: Congress should provide oversight of immigration enforcement
activities to ensure that children are protected during worksite
enforcement and other operations. ICE should assume that there will
always be children, generally very young children, affected whenever
adults are arrested in worksite enforcement operations and should
develop a consistent policy for parents' release. Social services and
economic assistance need to be in place and provided until parents are
released from detention and their immigration cases are resolved—often
a prolonged period of many months. Longer-term counseling for children
and their parents to mitigate psychological impacts may also be
necessary.

Those who suffer the greatest harm in ICE raids are children. If our
nation is to make any claim for humanity, children deserve to be
protected and cared for when their parents are taken away.

For more information about the Children's Defense Fund, go to
http://www.childrensdefense.org/.
  ________________________________

Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund and
its Action Council whose Leave No Child Behind(R) mission is to ensure
every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start
and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the
help of caring families and communities.

Join Marian Wright Edelman in Los Angeles on September 14 for the
first annual People(R) Red Carpet Fun Run. Jessi Stensland, and
members of the Women's Olympic Softball team will also be there! This
3 mile run (or 1.5 mile walk) through the iconic sets and stages of
the Paramount Studios lot benefits the Children's Defense Fund.

Mrs. Edelman will release her new book, The Sea Is So Wide and My Boat
Is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation, in September
2008. The book will be a look at what's been done and what still needs
to be done to make our world safe and fair for all children.

Sign up to receive an email notification when the book is available
for purchase.

Children's Defense Fund
25 E St., NW
Washington, DC 20001
http://www.childrensdefense.org/
 800-CDF-1200