SAN ANTONIO \u2014 Immigration advocates said they have been seeing more children show up to San Antonio immigration court all alone with no parents or attorneys.<\/p>\n
Immigration experts told us children could be showing up by themselves to immigration court hearings out of their family\u2019s fear of deportation.<\/p>\n
If a child is going through the immigration process alone, Professor Erica Schommer with St. Mary\u2019s University, said they can\u2019t go through an expedited removal, or quicker deportation.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy guess is that they’re waiting outside, you know, off site, in close proximity to the immigration court and the kids are going in by themselves because the family members have been made aware that there are ICE agents looking for people to detain,\u201d is how Professor Schommer explained it.<\/p>\n
Professor Schommer said minors showing up to court alone more than likely have family nearby waiting for them.<\/p>\n
Under ICE protocols and rules, Professor Schommer said anyone who is under 21 and not married is considered a minor.<\/p>\n
If that minor crossed the border with a parent or adult family member, their cases usually go through immigration court together and that\u2019s why we\u2019ve seen several mothers detained with their children in the last few weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat’s called the consolidated proceeding, and so the child wouldn’t be going to court alone. The child is going to court tied to their parents\u2019 case, so the cases are heard together,\u201d said Professor Schommer.<\/p>\n
If that minor crossed alone or became separated from the adult who they crossed the border with, they are considered unaccompanied and Professor Schommer said they no longer qualify for an expedited removal, or quicker deportation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s just simply not an option for ICE to do, because the law that Congress passed in creating expedited removal specifically exempts unaccompanied minors from being processed like that,\u201d said Professor Schommer.<\/p>\n
Children who show up to immigration court alone, according to Professor Schommer, probably don\u2019t have an immigration attorney due to recent budget cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose funding programs have been cut, and that means that you have children as young as toddlers who can barely talk, who are expected to represent themselves in immigration court,\u201d said Professor Schommer.<\/p>\n
We reached out to the Department of Justice to ask about the removal process for unaccompanied minors.<\/p>\n
The department directed us to the department of Homeland Security, we have reached out to them twice but still haven\u2019t heard back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2014 Immigration advocates said they have been seeing more children show up to San Antonio immigration…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,15031,245,281,13045,5410,409,15030,7202,7203,358,3187,15029,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-14694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-attorneys","10":"tag-children","11":"tag-court","12":"tag-deportation","13":"tag-ice","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-minors","16":"tag-san-antonio","17":"tag-sanantonio","18":"tag-texas","19":"tag-tx","20":"tag-unaccompanied","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114746460951884709","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}