NYC Pledges Legal Help For Separated Immigrant Kids

NEW YORK CITY HALL — New York City officials pledged Monday to provide free legal help for the roughly 40 immigrant children who remain here after getting separated from their parents at the southern U.S. border.

More than 300 children were taken from their families and brought to New York City under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy calling for the prosecution of anyone caught crossing the southern border illegally.

About 40 are still in the care of local social service providers nearly two months after a court-ordered reunifcation deadline, said Bitta Mostofi, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs. While their situations vary, in most cases their parents have been deported and some are still waiting to be placed with family sponsors, Mostofi said.

"There’s certainly a lot more work to be done to ensure that the 40 that remain here are able to reunite with family," she said.

The city has set aside $4.1 million in its current budget for legal services for more than 900 immigrant kids, Mayor Bill de Blasio's office announced. That includes children who were separated from their families and other so-called unaccompanied alien children who came to the U.S. on their own, officials said.

The money will provide legal defense for the children in deportation proceedings, social-work resources to address their trauma, and help with screenings for potential family sponsors, according to the mayor's office.

Some of the roughly 1,500 unaccompanied kids are already receiving legal representation, said Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks. But the city expects that number to increase, as federal officials have signaled they want to expand local centers' capacity to take them in, Mostofi said.

"We want to make sure that we have our legal services providers in place with appropriate resources to be able to step up and meet the needs in the ever-changing landscape as federal policies change," Banks said.

The move came after a weeklong volunteer excursion by city workers to help hundreds of parents and kids detained at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mostofi and 15 city lawyers and social workers went last week week to Dilley, Texas to serve the immigrants, many of whom are seeking asylum in the U.S., officials said. Their trip was paid for by the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, a nonprofit whose board is chaired by first lady Chirlane McCray.

The staffers worked back-to-back 12-hour days doing mental health evaluations and preparing immigrants for their interviews related to their asylum claims, officials said.

Some of the children the delegation encountered had been shipped to the detention center after first being brought to New York City, Mostofi said, while many families planned to head for the five boroughs if allowed to stay in the U.S.

While they held onto hope for a better life in America, city workers said, the detainees described harrowing journeys away from their home countries where they feared for their lives.

"I saw PTSD in ways I had never seen before," said Carmen Blanco, a clinical social worker and supervisor of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York City Health + Hospitals, at a City Hall news conference. "... This is the first time I have seen every single symptom hit. And it was frightening to us, but worse for the families."

A young mother Blanco spoke with described being extorted on a weekly basis and having a knife held to her and her baby's heads when it was discovered that she'd attended a protest. She borrowed money and traversed Central America to get away, Blanco said.

Blanco asked one detained young girl what her favorite animal was. She chose a butterfly, "because it can get out of here by flying," Blanco said. Separated parents also experienced "intense distress," she said.

"They had nightmares. They weren’t able to sleep," she said. "They experienced intrusive thoughts, traumatic recollections and the inability to concentrate on anything else but, 'When am I going to see my child again?'"

(Lead image: Bitta Mostofi, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, speaks at a City Hall news conference Monday after returning from a trip to Dilley, Texas. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)