Scared But No Longer Alone: Using Louisiana to Build a Nationwide System of Representation for Unaccompanied Children

Abstract

In recent years, tens of thousands of unaccompanied children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have fled to the United States. Most have experienced “horrendous trauma” as a result of swelling gang activity, drug trafficking, and corruption. Many were physically or sexually abused. One Honduran child was prompted to leave after seeing a girl his age, eleven, resist a robbery of $5 across the street from his home. “[S]he was clubbed over the head and dragged by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties in it, and left her body in a ravine.” But the danger does not end once they leave their home country. Another eleven-year-old girl was raped and impregnated by the men her family paid to bring her to the United States. She is now “[o]ne of the many [children] who can’t even talk anymore, can’t even talk.” Yet, somehow, we expect these traumatized children to advocate for themselves in immigration court.