Number Grows : Immigrant Teens Find Little Refuge

When a work accident in his Mexican hometown left his father paralyzed last year, Cesar Reyes, the eldest of nine children, decided to go to the United States. He planned to find a job and send money home. He was 17.

Jose Vicente, 19, came to escape Salvadoran guerrillas who had taken him and his mother prisoners. They had come to their home in the middle of the night, like they had earlier for his father, he said. Jose Vicente was the only one to escape.

Over the last several months in Los Angeles, Cesar and Jose have tried but failed most days to find work and have spent most nights on the streets. They are among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young homeless immigrants sleeping in parks, under bridges and in abandoned buildings.

Numbers Unprecedented

The teen-age immigrants--some as young as 12 and 14--are arriving in unprecedented numbers, according to experts who say more of them are arriving alone. Some come escaping the draft, others the escalating violence and poverty in their home countries.

With no relatives or friends to receive them and confronted by U.S. laws that ban their employment, the youngsters often go hungry or depend on the kindness of strangers.

The few religious and community groups that help teen-age immigrants say they are seeing about twice as many as a year ago. Some estimate that more than half the homeless teen-agers downtown are Latino immigrants.

Some end up at Juvenile Hall and in the hands of immigration authorities. Otherwise, no government agency claims responsibility for the youngsters.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Protective Services used to offer assistance to those who asked to be sent home, but even that service has been discontinued. The Mexican Consulate says it is trying to pick up the slack and assists in the return of as many as 25 youngsters to Mexico each week.

Those trying to help the youngsters who remain face a frustrating task: Not only are jobs scarcer than ever for illegal immigrants, but services for them are almost non-existent.

“No one cares what happens to these kids,” said Father Richard Estrada, associate pastor at Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church, also known as La Placita.

About a dozen youngsters turn up almost daily at the historic downtown church that has declared itself a sanctuary for refugees and immigrants. They are offered meals three days a week and are allowed to sleep on the floor of the church hall, where about 200 older immigrants bed down each night.

“We counsel the kids to go home, especially the younger ones,” Estrada said. “And we try to keep them from going bad.” But it is a losing battle, he said, since “we have little to offer them.”

A few months ago Alfonso, 19, hooked up with two other teen-agers who guided him across the border. They were on their way back to Los Angeles after having been deported, and they led Alfonso to their former home--MacArthur Park. (The young man asked that his real name not be used. To protect other youngsters in this story, most last names have been dropped.)

The park scene startled Alfonso-- kids, younger than himself, strung out on drugs and selling in broad daylight. At night, they hopped into cars with Americanos who paid them up to $30 for sex.

Once he got to know some of the youths at the park, Alfonso felt more at ease. “They’re really all right,” he said. But Alfonso remained sure of one thing: He would never use drugs nor end up like them.

After about three weeks of failed attempts at finding a job, of going hungry and of sleeping under dirty blankets under a stairway with the others, Alfonso relented.

Gathering all the macho moxie he could muster, Alfonso told himself, “A mi me vale!”-- a Mexican war cry akin to “The hell with it!”--and got into one of the cars that cruise the park for boys. His bronzed, aquiline good looks made him popular on the corner.

The park is in the heart of the predominantly Central American Pico-Union area and along with downtown has the highest concentration of young homeless immigrants, according to Anne Donahue, director of a Covenant House shelter program.

In recent weeks, Covenant House workers have been scouting Los Angeles streets at night for homeless teen-agers. The organization is preparing to open a 100-bed shelter next year, Donahue said.

“We’ve been amazed by the high number of Latino kids on the streets,” she said. “And we’ve barely scratched the surface.”

“There is an absolutely critical need for services for all homeless youngsters”--including the immigrant youths who are generally younger and not always welcomed at shelters serving the general homeless teen-age population, she said.

Jaime Flores, a community worker at El Rescate, a group in the Pico-Union district that assists Central American refugees, said that nearly half the refugees arriving from Guatemala and El Salvador these days are minors traveling alone or with other minors.

Unlike previous waves of refugees, many of the youngsters are the first in their families to come. UCLA anthropologist James Loucky, who works in the Guatemalan community, said this has given rise to homelessness among Central Americans.

“It’s something we’re seeing for the first time,” he said. “Even a year ago I didn’t know of any Central American homeless.”

Loucky said the support network among the refugees has weakened over time as the communities have grown.

“People (in the Guatemalan community) say that now there are people coming up who they don’t know or who are maybe the kids of people they use to know back home. . . . Years have gone by, and there’s not the same sense of obligation,” he said.

It was nearly noon and Pedro Angel still had not eaten. He had risen at 5 a.m. with the other men at La Placita’s church hall to go look for work at the day-labor pickup spots they frequent. Finding none, he returned to the church. He had nowhere else to go.

A slender, sweet-faced, 16-year-old from Guatemala, Pedro Angel began working alongside his father on their small piece of land when he was 9 years old. “We are very poor,” he said.

His dream of making enough money here to send home has vanished over the last two months. “I’m sorry I ever came,” he said.

Some of the youngsters walk the few blocks from La Placita to Skid Row missions for meals. Pedro Angel prefers to go hungry, he said. The place frightens him.

Unlike Pedro Angel, the vast majority of youngsters interviewed for this story expressed no intention of returning home--not yet anyway.

“It would be embarrassing,” said Alfonso, who still drops by the park to visit old friends although he has temporarily been taken in by a man who picked him up there. “They’d make fun of me back home.”

When the youngsters write or call home, they tell their parents they are doing fine. “We don’t want to worry them,” one teen-ager said, recalling his parent’s reluctant consent when he left.

“Besides, it’s not as if we could ask our parents to send us money,” said another, eliciting laughter from his friends.

For others, however, the money is secondary.

“It’s hard not knowing when I’ll be able to return to my own country . . . or see my brothers and sisters,” said Jose Vicente, the young Salvadoran whose parents were abducted by guerrillas. “There are times when I feel no joy about anything. . . .”

Jose, who was taken in by a couple after spending several weeks on the streets, said he has found only occasional work. He once got a steady job, he said, but the gardener who employed him refused to pay him after three weeks. “I didn’t want any problems so I let it go,” he said.

Jose seldom leaves the house these days. The labor pickup corner he used to go to was raided recently by immigration agents. The few jobs he finds in the newspaper require proof of legal status, and he has none.

Those who work with the youths say that behind their tough and unkempt exterior they are “good kids”--well-mannered and easy to work with.

“They seem to be real tender hearted,” said Daniel Loera, who serves as lay Catholic chaplain at Central Juvenile Hall. But when it comes to survival, they will do whatever it takes, he said.

Paul Guerrero, a probation officer who keeps track of illegal immigrant youngsters at Juvenile Hall, said that about 25 of them are brought in each week--twice as many as a year ago--most of them for selling drugs, stealing and car burglaries.

Return After Deportation

Even after the youngsters are turned over to authorities for deportation, Guerrero said he often sees them again. In one case, a teen-age boy who was sent back across the border, re-entered the country illegally, was arrested on the streets of Los Angeles for selling drugs and was back in Juvenile Hall--all within 24 hours, Guerrero said.

“I see no way to stop them from coming,” he said. “We should have some services for them while they’re here.”

Some of the youngsters not only survive, but manage to flourish.

Joaquin was 15 when he came to the United States. He had one goal in mind: “They say everything’s better in the U.S., so I thought it would be better to get an education here.”

Over the last two years, Joaquin, a serious-minded young man with big plans, has attended three different high schools and worked when he could find a job. He has lived in half a dozen shelters, in abandoned buildings, and occasionally with friends, but the teen has seldom missed a day of school. He has maintained a 3.5 grade point average. He hopes to graduate with honors from Hollywood High next summer.

“I don’t care what I have to go through to get what I want . . ., like an education,” he said.

Joaquin’s determination has already paid off: He speaks English almost like a native. And he has been allowed to stay at shelters where he has seen other Spanish-speaking youngsters turned away.

Joaquin recently lost an opportunity to attend advanced courses at UCLA because he cannot afford to pay for transportation. But a more immediate concern is where he will be spending the night.

A few days ago, he was asked to leave the small shelter where he was staying. The six-bed shelter run by a Byzantine Rite Catholic priest is one of only a few small shelters specifically serving immigrant youth. At this shelter, temporary housing is offered to youngsters for a month at a time. Joaquin had stayed for two.

“I don’t know where I will go next,” he said. “I just hope that I’ll find a stable place where I’ll be able to study. . . . These are my last six months in school.”

The young man said he is applying for placement by the county in a foster home, but it is unlikely he will qualify.

Spokeswomen for the county Department of Childrens Services said the agency is responsible only for “neglected or abused” children.

“A child that just makes up his mind that he wants to leave home and come to the big city is not a case within our realm,” said Barbara Calhoon, a supervisor in the department’s international placement unit. She was referring to foster care and transportation to a youngster’s home country.

Up until last August, an average of 15 youngsters a month were sent home through the international unit. Now, only about two a month go, she said. The change reflects a stricter interpretation of departmental policy.

Sister Kathy Wood, a Franciscan nun who offers morning meals to homeless immigrants on Skid Row, is disappointed by the lack of government help. No matter how you look at it, she insisted, “downtown is no place for children to be on the street. It doesn’t matter what country they were born in.”

If there is no alternative and a youngster’s well-being is at stake, the Immigration and Naturalization Service might send the youngster home, said Robert Moschorak, associate INS Western Region commissioner for operations. “But we’re not interested in providing free trips to home countries,” he said, adding that in his 24 years with the agency he has yet to see a minor turn himself in.

INS officials said they seldom apprehend minors in the interior, where their enforcement focus is the workplace. Those caught at the border are sent home “voluntarily.” Many of the Central Americans, however, refuse to return voluntarily. About 2,000 minors are held by the INS each year, and the overwhelming majority of them are apprehended in Southern California, according to research of INS records by the National Center for Immigrants Rights Inc.

Although overall apprehensions at the border are down from previous years, Christine Davis, an INS official responsible for detention and deportation, said she has detected “a slight increase in the number of Central American unaccompanied minors, primarily young boys.”

The Los Angeles-based National Center for Immigrants Rights, which has litigated numerous class action suits on behalf of immigrants, plans to open a multi-service center and small shelter for homeless youngsters next spring to assist those released from custody. The center has begun recruiting families willing to offer temporary shelter to the youngsters, as well as lawyers willing to assist with their cases.

Despite such efforts, however, the needs of the young immigrants far outstrip available services.

Brother Joseph McLachlan of the Missionaries of Charity--a Catholic order founded by Nobel laureate Mother Teresa of Calcutta--sees as many as 60 immigrant teen-agers a day at a small shelter he operates in the Pico-Union area. They drop in at the homey, two-story house for a shower, a free meal and clean clothes. Some just come to rest from their nights on the streets.

Brother Joseph said he never has enough to offer them. And he has nowhere to send those who ask for help in kicking a drug habit. He has been told by government-funded drug rehabilitation programs that the young men do not qualify.

The hardest part for Brother Joseph comes at the end of the day, however, when he closes the door behind them. There is room only for eight to spend the night.

“It’s very difficult to let them out, especially the young ones, knowing the difficulties and danger they face sleeping in the streets,” he said. “All I can say is . . . ‘Take care of yourself.’ ”