Casa San Juan, Hailed as Best INS Youth-Detention Facility, Keeps Homelike Atmosphere

They have jumped borders, hopped trains, dodged police and scraped for a living on the streets.

Though only children, they have managed hazardous journeys halfway across a continent, fleeing warfare and poverty. Against all odds, they have reached their destination: the United States.

Thus far, however, it hasn’t been as they had hoped it would.

“I just want to live with a family, to live in peace,” says Juan, a 15-year-old from El Salvador who explains softly how he fled his native land in fear for his life. “I want to stay in America.”

Juan and a dozen other boys--all Central Americans, all less than 18 years old and unaccompanied by adults, and all prisoners of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service--are residents of a singular detention facility known as the Casa San Juan, which is situated in an inconspicuous building on a residential street in San Diego’s North Park. Their crime is being in the United States illegally. All are seeking some relief from deportation, mostly political asylum--a time-consuming process that could leave them incarcerated for months.

No Armed Guards

But their “jail,” though far from luxurious, is more akin in atmosphere to a kind of group home; it has no armed guards, no “cells” and few trappings of life behind bars. Children here receive daily classroom instruction in English and other subjects--a stark contrast, INS critics say, to the oppressively monotonous, impersonal and sometimes threatening atmosphere of other INS detention facilities. Advocates have waged an extensive legal battle in federal court aimed at improving conditions for the scores of children incarcerated by the INS nationwide.

“Of all the detention facilities, I think that the Casa San Juan is the only one that’s habitable for children,” said Haydee Sanchez, a paralegal with El Rescate, the Los Angeles-based immigrant-rights group.

In fact, Casa San Juan is a sort of model for court-ordered changes governing how juveniles in INS custody will be held. “It demonstrates that the INS can put children in good facilities rather than substandard facilities,” said Alice Bussiere, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law in San Francisco, which is assisting in the legal effort on behalf of incarcerated minors.

It is morning at the Casa San Juan, and a teacher is conducting classes in mathematics. The day before, INS officials brought in a handful of new children.

“I’ve done additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions,” says one of the new boys, Angel, a sprightly, short-haired 13-year-old boy from Guatemala, who explains later how he became separated from his father in San Ysidro. “He got on a bus and I couldn’t,” he says of his father, who had accompanied him during the long trip from their home in Guatemala.

Opened in July, 1982, as a place to house material witnesses in smuggling cases, the Casa San Juan has since expanded to include as many as 33 INS prisoners, all women and male children. (Few unaccompanied juvenile girls are arrested by INS authorities, so the only minors kept here are boys. Girls arrested are sent to other facilities or are placed in foster care.)

U.S. officials contract with Catholic Community Services, an arm of the Roman Catholic Church, to provide the services at the two-story Casa San Juan, which, from the outside, provides no clue that it is a detention facility.

Classroom With Television

Upstairs, there are seven bedrooms, each with cot-style beds and a bathroom, for as many as 15 male youths; there is also a classroom with a television. As many as 18 adult women, occasionally accompanied by their children, stay downstairs, where there are also a kitchen, dining area and offices. The Casa’s modest grounds include a small patio and a yard, enlivened by a mural depicting Mexico and Central America, where the boys play soccer and basketball.

Although utilitarian and somewhat cramped, the overall setting is far from the gloomy atmosphere of most jails and detention facilities.

“We want to try to emphasize a home atmosphere where the anxiety level isn’t as high,” explained Susan Torres-Tacata, who heads the program for Catholic Community Services.

There are occasional holiday and birthday celebrations.

“This is the best job I ever had,” said Charles Mafale, the cook, who has been at the Casa San Juan since it opened. “These kids aren’t delinquents or anything like that. They’re just looking for a better life.”

The average stay, officials said, is 12 days; some detainees remain only a day or two before being bailed out and turned over to a relative. One boy remained nine months, a record.

Security is far from rigid; the doors are locked, but windows remain open; the only bars are designed to protect first-floor windows from errant soccer balls. Because of the informality, authorities attempt to screen out street-wise youths and potential trouble-makers, who are placed in more secure facilities.

“We know we’re going to have a few escapes every year from the Casa San Juan, but we feel it’s worth the risk,” said Robert H. Mandgie, INS assistant district director for detention and deportation in San Diego.

However, space limitations contribute to what immigrant advocates characterize as a major drawback: There is no visiting by relatives, although attorneys do come to the facility. And, despite the upbeat atmosphere, the youths here are incarcerated, a situation that many would like to see changed. Advocates are fighting for a new policy whereby youths would be quickly released to the custody of suitable families willing to provide foster care.

“No matter how ideal Casa San Juan is--and it is the best place for children in INS custody to be right now--the children there are still locked up, and that’s not good,” said Carlos Holguin, an attorney with the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights in Los Angeles.

At the Casa, much of the children’s activity revolves around classes.

Their teacher is Joy Wasserman, a 10-year veteran of inner-city Detroit schools when she arrived at the Casa San Juan in February, 1985. That’s when classes first began, thanks to the cooperation of San Diego County juvenile authorities and federal officials. The efforts of Wasserman, a county employee, extend well beyond teaching: She is frequently on the telephone seeking prospective foster homes and legal guardians for the youths, attempting to expedite their immigration cases, trying to locate relatives and the like.

“These are wonderful children,” says Wasserman, a wide-eyed woman who speaks Spanish inflected with the accent of her native Midwest. “Most want to learn. We want to place as many as we can with responsible families.”

Scattered on Wasserman’s cluttered desk and posted on the wall in her light-filled second-floor office are mementoes of former students. There are hand-drawn scenes in crayon depicting the wondrous quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala; a Honduran flag; the colorful national crest of El Salvador. In her photo album are dozens of photographs of past residents, including a snapshot of a Honduran boy and a cake--celebrating his first-ever birthday party.

Her interest extends beyond her job. Wasserman has brought into her home a Nicaraguan youth, Jose Antonio, 15, a long-time orphan and former Casa San Juan resident. His parents were killed by Sandinista troops, says the teacher, who now cares for him like a son.

Although Jose Antonio hasn’t had much luck in his short life, he is fortunate in one sense: Refugees from leftist Nicaragua have a better chance at being granted political asylum in the United States than their counterparts from U.S.-backed regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras--a situation that critics have denounced as hypocritical. Whatever its merits, however, the policy means that most boys at the Casa San Juan will likely be deported back to Central America, a prospect that frightens many.

Deportation Threat

Now, Wasserman is on the telephone with INS officials, attempting to expedite the farm-worker amnesty application of a 17-year-old Guatemalan boy, a former Casa San Juan resident, who now lives in Florida. Although his paper work is solid--she helped collect evidence of his residence and employment history in the United States--Wasserman says that the INS is threatening deportation.

“This kid is scared to death; he can’t understand what’s happening,” she says.

Such dramas are daily occurrences here.

Another Guatemalan boy arrived at the center and said he was owed $140 in wages from a farm-labor job in Arizona. After many telephone calls and the filing of a complaint with Arizona authorities, the employer finally relented and sent the long-missing check. As the boy had already been deported, the money was recently forwarded to his home in Guatemala’s northern province of Huehuetenango.

Staffers also tell of Frankie and Ralston, two boys from Belize, who cried when they were sent back to that Central American nation after staying in the Casa more than four months. “I think this was the only home they ever knew,” said one worker.

But tears aren’t shed that easily here.

“In three years, I don’t remember a kid telling me what has happened to them, and breaking out in tears,” Wasserman says during a break between classes. “It’s more like they’re telling something that happened on TV.”

Indeed, the boys, all dressed in shorts, sneakers and T-shirts, tend to recount their tales simply, no matter how compelling. Their stories are similar: They speak of warfare in their home countries, of forced recruiting drives by the military, of broken homes, of encounters with Mexican immigration officials seeking bribes--for these youths were also “illegal aliens” in Mexico during their long treks northward.

Some say they have family in the United States, although many are unaware of how to contact them. Some have no close relatives and have been on their own for years. All were drawn here by the age-old immigrants’ dream of a better life.

In a written survey, some of the boys recalled episodes from their pasts.

“I witnessed the death of a teacher at the university,” wrote a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy. “For this reason, I left my country.”

Jorge Alberto, a 16-year-old Salvadoran, tells of an 18-day odyssey hopping freight trains with three friends through Mexico, always headed north, begging for food and sleeping on streets and in railroad stations. Darting to his room, he gathers a well-worn brochure giving a map and schedule of train routes in Mexico, complete with diagrams of the styles of freight cars.

“The grain cars are the best,” he recalls, directing a visitor’s gaze towards such a car on the brochure. “There’s a little space inside where you can sleep comfortably.”

Julio, a thin, outgoing youth of 14, says he was reared in a Guatemalan village by an uncle who wanted him to join the army. Speaking the way another child might recall a school outing, Julio recalls seeing the bodies of soldiers killed after a guerrilla attack, sprawled over the fog-shrouded countryside of northern Guatemala.

Rather than join the military, Julio says, he left home on his own and found work collecting bottles in Guatemala City for about $1.50 a day, plus a place to stay. He kept the job until he decided to head to the United States late last year.

“If I joined the military, I might be killed by the guerrillas,” says Julio.; “If I joined the guerrillas, I might be killed by the military. There is nothing for me in my country now.”

His goals now? “I’d like to go to school in the United States and learn computers.”

Juan, a soft-spoken, deeply religious 15-year-old, says he was raised by a family in a small village near the capital of San Salvador. On his 11th birthday, he says, the woman he thought was his mother informed him that he would have to leave. She also told him the truth of his background: His natural mother, unable to support him, had given him away as an infant. Now, the woman told him, he would have to support himself.

Juan says he left for the capital, where he found work as a helper on trucks heading for Guatemala. He worked for four years, he said, barely earning enough to eat; he says he often slept nights in a market. He also met some missionaries and became an Evangelical Christian, he relates, punctuating his conversation with references to Dios, Jesus and El Senor.

One evening two months ago, he says, he stayed at the rented room of a 22-year-old cousin in the capital. Without warning, he says, four armed men burst through the doors and pinned his cousin on a bed. While the men were occupied, Juan says, he escaped through the door, avoiding capture by taking shelter in a nearby store.

“I don’t know if the men were police or guerrillas,” Juan says, seated on a desk in his simple room at the shelter, looking to the sunshine outside.

Fearing for his own life in a country where “disappearances” are threads in the fabric of life, Juan says he left on his own for the United States with his meager savings of $40 or so; he caught buses through El Salvador and Guatemala and, finally, boarded Mexican passenger trains to the border. Once at the border, Juan says, he simply sat down on the U.S side, allowing immigration authorities to arrest him.

“I came to ask for protection,” says Juan, speaking in a hushed, almost prayerful voice. “I want to be with a family, helping them, living freely, learning English. . . . I can’t go back to El Salvador. I’ll lose my life.”