Sonoma County to consider legal aid for undocumented immigrant children

Central American children who have fled cartel and gang violence in their homeland and arrived unaccompanied at the southern U.S. border, advocates say, are going at it alone in immigration courts without attorneys as their cases are put on the fast track under a new federal policy.

Sonoma County officials don't know how many of the children are temporarily living in the area, but they're hoping to pitch in by providing taxpayer-funded legal aid to a 'limited' number of the unaccompanied minors for their deportation proceedings.

County Counsel Bruce Goldstein said many children are having their cases expedited, giving them little time to find lawyers and build strong cases.

'They've been given as little as two months to find an attorney,' he said, adding that many end up going before immigration judges without lawyers.

He said organizations and government officials around the state have started to recognize the need. He pointed to a recent move by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to set aside over the next two years more than $2 million for legal aid for minors and families, as well as a bill recently introduced by Governor Jerry Brown, Attorney General Kamala Harris and state lawmakers aimed at allocating $3 million in legal aid for unaccompanied children.

'What we're trying to do is a small part,' Goldstein said about the proposed legal aid going before Sonoma County supervisors today for a vote.

Peter Rumble, the county spokesman, said officials have not been notified of any unaccompanied immigrant children having been placed in Sonoma County. Nonetheless, he said they hope to reach out to children in neighboring counties through the program.

The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement released numbers for 14 counties in California where children were turned over to relatives and sponsors. Not surprisingly, Los Angeles County had the largest number with just under 2,000 children released from Jan. 1 to the end of July.

Marin County had close to 100 kids, while San Francisco had 185.

Goldstein expects he'll need about five to 10 attorneys in his office to handle a limited amount of cases. The most complicated cases would take 40 to 60 hours over the course of six months, he estimated.

Goldstein, who has 30 attorneys working in his office, added they also will look for assistance in other legal departments in the county, including the Public Defender's Office. They'll also need employees who can provide Spanish language interpretation.

Supervisor Mike McGuire supports the effort, saying employees who volunteer will be able to use work time to handle the cases as long as it doesn't interfere with their regular duties.

'We need to provide assistance to those who are vulnerable,' he said.

Supervisor Efren Carrillo agreed. He said it's unfair for unaccompanied immigrant children to go at it alone.

'Having them represent themselves in court can be very daunting,' Carrillo said.

A special report compiled by a team at Syracuse University found nine out 10 children who appeared in court without representation were ordered to be deported.

'Outcomes in these cases are all too often determined by whether an attorney was present to assist the child in presenting his or her case,' the report stated. It was published in July and included cases filed in immigration courts from 2005 through June.

Carrillo said county supervisors started looking into how to serve the unaccompanied minors fleeing their countries after meetings earlier this year with local activists, including members of the North Bay Organizing Project. The group held a vigil in July where members collected clothing, diapers, food and other supplies to send to an allied group in San Diego to distribute to the immigrant children.

Jerry Dunn, the county's human services director, who sat in on some of those meetings, said he reached out to the Office of Refugee Resettlement after county supervisors last month asked staff to explore possibly providing temporary shelter for unaccompanied minors at Valley of the Moon Children's Home, a 24-hour emergency shelter for abandoned, abused and neglected kids. However, he said, the federal agency told him they no longer needed shelters to house the children.

'At that point they felt they had enough help' with shelter, Dunn explained.

Border patrol agents picked up more than 66,000 unaccompanied children, most of them from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, along the southern U.S. border between Oct. 1, 2013, and the end of last month. The number was nearly double the figure from the previous fiscal year, when about 35,000 kids were detained, according to figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The children were turned over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kids then underwent medical checks and were given immunizations before being placed in shelters or with relatives and sponsors.

It remains unclear how many of those children were released to sponsors and relatives in Sonoma, Napa, Lake and Mendocino counties.

The Press Democrat has made several requests to the federal Administration for Children and Families — the agency overseeing refugee resettlement — for records that would provide such figures for the North Coast region. But officials refused to release numbers for counties that received fewer than 50 unaccompanied children, voicing concerns that doing so could reveal the identity of the children and violate their privacy.

'These children may have histories of abuse or may be seeking safety from threats of violence,' Kenneth Wolfe, an Administration for Children and Families spokesman, said in an email.

If supervisors approve the project, Goldstein said staff would ask the Bar Association of San Francisco, where the nearest immigration court is located, to refer to them cases of children living in Sonoma County and the North Bay area.

Regardless of local numbers, Carrillo said it's a national issue and residents should be concerned about it.

'This is a growing humanitarian crisis. It's all of our responsibility. We talking about kids,' he said. 'I do believe residents of Sonoma County believe this is the right thing to do.'

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story gave the wrong county legal agency that may assist the County Counsel's Office in providing legal aid to unaccompanied immigrant children. The Public Defender's Office may fill that role.