USA: children 'orphaned' by deporation

from International Herald Tribune:

NEW YORK When her mother dropped by a federal immigration office here to complete some paperwork in April last year, 8-year-old Virginia Feliz became part of a growing tribe of American children who have lost a parent to deportation.
.
Her mother, Berly Feliz, 47, who migrated to the United States illegally a decade ago, went to the immigration office on a routine visit to renew her work authorization. But because an old deportation order had resurfaced, she was quickly clapped into handcuffs, and within hours placed on a plane to her native Honduras, unable to say goodbye to her husband and little girl.
.
Virginia declared that she hates her last name, which means happy in Spanish. "I'm not happy; I'm sad," she said. "Because it's not fair that everybody else has their mom except me." She dropped onto a couch next to her father, Carlos Feliz, a U.S. citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic.
.
No one keeps track of exactly how many American children were left behind by the record 186,000 noncitizens expelled from the United States last year, or the 887,000 others required to make a "voluntary departure."
.
But immigration experts say there are tens of thousands of children every year who are U.S. citizens and lose a parent to deportation. As the debate over immigration policy heats up, such broken families are troubling people on all sides and are challenging schools and mental health clinics in immigrant neighborhoods.
.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security say they are simply enforcing laws adopted in 1996, which all but eliminated the discretion of immigration officers to consider family ties before enforcing an old order of removal.
.
"There are millions of people who are illegally in the United States, and it's unfortunate, when they're caught, seeing a family split up," said William Strassberger, a spokesman for federal immigration services. "But the person has to be answerable for their actions."
.
Federal officials said they leave time for parents to make arrangements for their children, and refer them to a social service agency if necessary. Many parents arrange to leave U.S.-born children with relatives or friends; others, especially those who have no one to assume responsibility for a child, take the children along when they are expelled.
.
"People refer to that as a 'Sophie's Choice' situation," he said. "Where the child is going to be, is left up to the parent."
.
As a practical matter, arrangements for a child left behind may be hasty at best, said Janet Sabel, who directs the immigration law unit of the Legal Aid Society. One mother about to be deported to Nicaragua last year was told to leave her four children with her husband, Sabel said. But the husband was an abusive drug user, and finally the mother persuaded the immigration officer to give her a few days to make other arrangements. A priest referred her to Legal Aid, which reopened the case, stopping the deportation.
.
"There's a happy ending to this story," Sabel said, "but the fact is, there was total luck in her finding her way to us."
.
Similar cases cause concern for Birdette Gardiner-Parkinson, clinical director at the Caribbean Community Mental Health program at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. In one, she said, an outgoing, academically gifted 12-year-old began failing classes, mutilating herself and having suicidal thoughts after her Colombian father disappeared into removal proceedings.
.
In another case, nightmares and school failure plague the youngest of six children whose father, a cabdriver with 20 years' residence in the United States, was deported to Nigeria six hours after he reported for a green card interview. He had unpaid traffic fines, she said.
.
"The impact is very devastating," Gardiner-Parkinson said. "When children lose a family member this way, even though they may have a phone conversation with them, the physical separation feels like death."
.
The distress of children left behind in the United States echoes that of children left on the southern side of the border, say scholars of transnational migration like Leah Schmalzbauer, a social anthropologist who recently conducted a two-year research project on families split between Honduras and the United States.
.
The numbers are expected to swell, said Schmalzbauer, now an assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at Montana State University. Families in poor countries like Honduras can no longer manage without remittances from the United States, and women are beginning to replace men as the primary migrants, filling growing demands in the United States for low-cost elder care, domestic work and other service jobs.
.
"There's no protection for that undocumented labor, and even though we speak of family values, there's also no protection for the children," she said. "The research shows the emotional impacts are huge, whether they're separated from parents on this side or on the other side of the border."
.NEW YORK When her mother dropped by a federal immigration office here to complete some paperwork in April last year, 8-year-old Virginia Feliz became part of a growing tribe of American children who have lost a parent to deportation.

Her mother, Berly Feliz, 47, who migrated to the United States illegally a decade ago, went to the immigration office on a routine visit to renew her work authorization. But because an old deportation order had resurfaced, she was quickly clapped into handcuffs, and within hours placed on a plane to her native Honduras, unable to say goodbye to her husband and little girl.
...




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< < Back to Start of Article NEW YORK When her mother dropped by a federal immigration office here to complete some paperwork in April last year, 8-year-old Virginia Feliz became part of a growing tribe of American children who have lost a parent to deportation.
.
Her mother, Berly Feliz, 47, who migrated to the United States illegally a decade ago, went to the immigration office on a routine visit to renew her work authorization. But because an old deportation order had resurfaced, she was quickly clapped into handcuffs, and within hours placed on a plane to her native Honduras, unable to say goodbye to her husband and little girl.
.
Virginia declared that she hates her last name, which means happy in Spanish. "I'm not happy; I'm sad," she said. "Because it's not fair that everybody else has their mom except me." She dropped onto a couch next to her father, Carlos Feliz, a U.S. citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic.
.
No one keeps track of exactly how many American children were left behind by the record 186,000 noncitizens expelled from the United States last year, or the 887,000 others required to make a "voluntary departure."
.
But immigration experts say there are tens of thousands of children every year who are U.S. citizens and lose a parent to deportation. As the debate over immigration policy heats up, such broken families are troubling people on all sides and are challenging schools and mental health clinics in immigrant neighborhoods.
.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security say they are simply enforcing laws adopted in 1996, which all but eliminated the discretion of immigration officers to consider family ties before enforcing an old order of removal.
.
"There are millions of people who are illegally in the United States, and it's unfortunate, when they're caught, seeing a family split up," said William Strassberger, a spokesman for federal immigration services. "But the person has to be answerable for their actions."
.
Federal officials said they leave time for parents to make arrangements for their children, and refer them to a social service agency if necessary. Many parents arrange to leave U.S.-born children with relatives or friends; others, especially those who have no one to assume responsibility for a child, take the children along when they are expelled.
.
"People refer to that as a 'Sophie's Choice' situation," he said. "Where the child is going to be, is left up to the parent."
.
As a practical matter, arrangements for a child left behind may be hasty at best, said Janet Sabel, who directs the immigration law unit of the Legal Aid Society. One mother about to be deported to Nicaragua last year was told to leave her four children with her husband, Sabel said. But the husband was an abusive drug user, and finally the mother persuaded the immigration officer to give her a few days to make other arrangements. A priest referred her to Legal Aid, which reopened the case, stopping the deportation.
.
"There's a happy ending to this story," Sabel said, "but the fact is, there was total luck in her finding her way to us."
.
Similar cases cause concern for Birdette Gardiner-Parkinson, clinical director at the Caribbean Community Mental Health program at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. In one, she said, an outgoing, academically gifted 12-year-old began failing classes, mutilating herself and having suicidal thoughts after her Colombian father disappeared into removal proceedings.
.
In another case, nightmares and school failure plague the youngest of six children whose father, a cabdriver with 20 years' residence in the United States, was deported to Nigeria six hours after he reported for a green card interview. He had unpaid traffic fines, she said.
.
"The impact is very devastating," Gardiner-Parkinson said. "When children lose a family member this way, even though they may have a phone conversation with them, the physical separation feels like death."
.
The distress of children left behind in the United States echoes that of children left on the southern side of the border, say scholars of transnational migration like Leah Schmalzbauer, a social anthropologist who recently conducted a two-year research project on families split between Honduras and the United States.
.
The numbers are expected to swell, said Schmalzbauer, now an assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at Montana State University. Families in poor countries like Honduras can no longer manage without remittances from the United States, and women are beginning to replace men as the primary migrants, filling growing demands in the United States for low-cost elder care, domestic work and other service jobs.
.
"There's no protection for that undocumented labor, and even though we speak of family values, there's also no protection for the children," she said. "The research shows the emotional impacts are huge, whether they're separated from parents on this side or on the other side of the border."
.NEW YORK When her mother dropped by a federal immigration office here to complete some paperwork in April last year, 8-year-old Virginia Feliz became part of a growing tribe of American children who have lost a parent to deportation.
.
Her mother, Berly Feliz, 47, who migrated to the United States illegally a decade ago, went to the immigration office on a routine visit to renew her work authorization. But because an old deportation order had resurfaced, she was quickly clapped into handcuffs, and within hours placed on a plane to her native Honduras, unable to say goodbye to her husband and little girl.
.
Virginia declared that she hates her last name, which means happy in Spanish. "I'm not happy; I'm sad," she said. "Because it's not fair that everybody else has their mom except me." She dropped onto a couch next to her father, Carlos Feliz, a U.S. citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic.
.
No one keeps track of exactly how many American children were left behind by the record 186,000 noncitizens expelled from the United States last year, or the 887,000 others required to make a "voluntary departure."
....
... immigration experts say there are tens of thousands of children every year who are U.S. citizens and lose a parent to deportation. As the debate over immigration policy heats up, such broken families are troubling people on all sides and are challenging schools and mental health clinics in immigrant neighborhoods.

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