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.
