Where Have All The Children Gone?

Araceli Sanchez had a harrowing week.  Last Tuesday, she left her 3-year-old’s birthday party to grab more paper plates.  She was pulled over for making an illegal turn to avoid construction.  If it was me, I’d have gotten a ticket and been on my way.

But Araceli has a Spanish accent, and no driver’s license.  And she lives in Arizona.

Araceli is married to US Citizen Guillermo Garcia, an Infantryman in the Army.  Contrary to popular belief, for most undocumented, marriage to an American Citizen does not guarantee you status in the US.  Quotas, which vary by country, keep official, legal immigration artificially low – even before the recession when businesses were crying for more workers.  Even if married to a US citizen, if you come from a country whose quota is full for the year (which usually happens within the first few days of the new quota year), you must be deported to your home country and wait ‘your turn’ (which will likely never come).  Usually the penalty is a minimum of 10 years in your home country.  The law does not bend when children are involved.

The Obama administration has been deporting record numbers of immigrants.  In 2010, the President had achieved 10% more deportations that President Bush did in 2008, and 25% more than Bush in 2007.  In the first half of 2011, 46,000 parents of children were arrested, detained and deported.  5100 of those children ended up in the foster care program.

There was no mention of who cared for Araceli’s child during her 48-hour stay in prison, since her husband was stationed, and panicked, in Germany.  But Araceli was lucky; one concession of the Obama administration is to decline to deport spouses of military personnel.  According to the provision, Araceli should never have been handed over to Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) after showing her military spouse ID. 

In 2010, I met a woman who wasn’t so lucky.  She was arrested in Harvard, Illinois for allegedly crossing the white line, midday, in her vehicle with her child.  Even though a friend arrived with bail, she was held for days for detention proceedings.  No member of police enforcement followed up on the location or care of her child while she was imprisoned.  She was turned over to ICE, booked, and given a deportation hearing date.

Starting from the 1870’s, American colonists took Native American children to re-education camps to ‘kill the Indian, save the man’.  Although some Indian boarding schools still exist, the practice is widely condemned now.  From the period of 1869-1969, Aboriginal children in Australia, known as the ‘stolen generation’, were forcibly removed from their parents in order to ‘civilise’ them, and in hopes that the tribal people would ‘die out’.  A formal apology was made in 2008. 

In my mind, American deportation policy toward undocumented immigrants is no less cruel and immoral.  The children are sometimes left here willingly, out of their parents’ desperation for a better life for their child.  But a nation that purports to value ‘families’ cannot ignore the tragic challenges these children will face in a flawed and financially-starved foster system with no local source of support.

Thankfully, the US might have a legal opportunity to change their policy.  The Latino Policy Coalition has submitted a complaint with the United Nations regarding the human rights record of the United States.  The complaint asserts that the 5100 children placed in foster care are now missing, and must be accounted for and reunified with their parents.

For the health, not only of these families, but also the fabric of our society, and our integrity as a nation, I hope this complaint forces the Obama administration to reconsider its deportation policy.