Advocates Say Life Is Bleak for Juvenile Illegal Aliens

Immigrant minors who enter the United States illegally and alone are often forced to languish in detention, subjected to arbitrary punishment and poor conditions, advocates testified Thursday before a state panel convened to evaluate federal immigration policy.

These juveniles are often allowed to “slip through the cracks” by the failure of authorities to take responsibility for them, the panel was told during the four-hour legislative hearing conducted by state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles).

Current immigration law “has left children abandoned in the shadows of the streets of Los Angeles,” Father David Cousineau, head of Catholic Charities in Los Angeles, told Torres’ Joint Legislative Committee on Refugee Resettlement, International Migration and Cooperative Development.

The people who testified were for the most part critics of policies carried out by the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service. Torres said INS officials declined an invitation to attend.

A spokeswoman for the INS regional office said the agency’s Washington headquarters frowns on allowing local INS officials to testify about national policy before state panels. If headquarters receives written questions in advance, officials are usually willing to provide written responses, she said.

Cousineau and other immigrant-rights advocates portrayed a bleak picture of the plight of many immigrant juveniles who reach Los Angeles alone:

After crossing the border, they often arrive in Los Angeles lost and disoriented. They may wander the streets or sleep in parks with the homeless and runaways. Or, if they are picked up by the police for loitering or other minor infractions, they often end up in a county juvenile detention facility with hardened youths who have committed serious crimes.

Their time in juvenile hall may stretch out indefinitely while local authorities wait for INS agents to retrieve the youngsters, who are then taken to detention centers in San Diego or Imperial counties or deported.

“It is extremely tragic that they (undocumented minors) are being incarcerated with juveniles who have committed crimes,” said Carlos Holguin, an attorney with the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. “They simply languish for weeks on end in places like Eastlake” Juvenile Hall.

At one detention facility in Imperial County, run by a private company under contract to the INS, eight teen-agers told of being handcuffed or punished for seemingly minor offenses. The testimony was presented to Torres’ committee through written declarations.

One 17-year-old said he was ordered to run 50 laps in summertime heat for failing to wear a facility-issued hat. When six other juveniles protested, they were sent to a “punishment room” for a week.

Torres, who is scheduled to meet next week with federal officials in Washington about immigration law, called the treatment “pretty startling” and said he would ask the INS for an explanation. He is calling for a separate immigration agency under the U.S. State Department.

But Robert Mandgie, INS assistant district director for detention and deportation in San Diego, said restraining devices are never used for punishment, there is no place for running laps at the Imperial County center and that discipline is usually limited to sending youths to their rooms for “quiet time.”

Most of the people detained at the Imperial County facility range in age from 15 to 17. Younger children are usually placed in temporary foster homes, he said.