rosenberg. you mentioned the obama administration all but eliminated deportation in the interior. speaking as someone who works with 20 direct social services around the country, that's not the message that's in the communities. i get asked when i service clients if i'm immigration. i'm like, really, do i look like immigration? they come a catholic charity location, places of safety in the community that are pillars of support and strength for the latinos. i just am curious -- this is the first time i have heard that deportations interior are not happening. i talk to families who have family members who are deported in the interior. so i'm just really -- it's great to hear. but my experience with my partners and my colleagues can say the same thing. >> listen, this is an important

conversation. i think that in addition to the reports that my organization has done, several reports that npi has produced, reports that the bipartisan policy center put out, here is what is true and undeniably true, that last year there were only 10,000 non-border -- recent border crosser ee crossers, non-criminals deported. you can level 3 and a single misdemeanor is an illegitimate criteria for deportation. i agree. we should eliminate the lower end. to deny as i would argue that many members in the media and many of the immigration groups have done of the substantial and significant and undeniable changes that have gone on -- i am not telling you that 10,000 is an acceptable number. it's too many. still too many. we got to do better than this.

but what is clear -- it's on my website. it's on their website. it's on five other organizations' websites, is that the -- it's the policy of the united states government today to not deport people from the interior of the country who do not have criminal records. is every office acting uniformly, is every -- if it's 10,000, that means it's 400 people per state annual. 200 people per state. it means, you will get cases where people were not criminals who came through the system. it's all true. but what is also true -- i think it's incumbent upon everyone in this room, is that it's the government of the united states no longer wants to deport people from the interior without criminal records. what that means is that the threat of deportation over the vast majority of undocumented immigrants in the united states has been lifted. it doesn't mean people aren't going to get caught up in the

system, it doesn't mean there aren't old court cases. but there's been a change -- this is undeniable. three years ago, two-thirds of the people deported from the z u.s. were from the interior. last year it was half of that. marc showed you some of the data. part of what i just want to challenge all of you is that the fact that you haven't heard it is because there are people in spanish language media and organizations who have been misleading the public about what is actually going on in terms of the government data. it doesn't mean there isn't cont contravailing data. but the government is trying hard to stop deporting people from the interior of the country who don't have criminal records and there are too many people that you are coming across in your social service work that are getting caught up in a system that's going through change. both of those things can be true at the same time. >> i would caution the way that the government is portraying that. i think that the level of fear that's in the communities is very real, whether that

government data is correct. that's great. >> i think some that was fear has been generated by media figures trying to get ratings and other people who are trying to raise money in organizations that are not actually telling the actual truth about what the government of the united states has done to change the immigration policies of the united states. so part of this is, you guys -- if i come here a year from now, we're in the same room, you can say, mr. rosenberg, you are so full of it. i looked at the data and you were there as -- >> if i had time to look at the data, i would. >> you are propaganda and none of this is true, we hear it in the community. that may be the case. all i'm asking you is to accept that what i'm saying might possibly and could be true. in fact, you know who agrees with me on this? marc. >> i think that's great. again, i'm not questioning the validity of your data. i'm questioning the fact that that's not getting into communities. what we do with the groups, we work with the families.

that's great for us to know. >> help us. >> i have to go face to face who have children who are in our care. it's my job to help them navigate this. data like that that i haven't seen because i'm -- i don't have the time. i would appreciate those resources if you could make sure that they are shared. >> can i -- i will add two things. one is, we just did this report last week. all the data is in in here. you should look at it. 95% i agree with simon or 99% agree. i think a couple of reasons that there's still a lot of fear in the community are three reasons. one is that the way the enforcement priorities are defined, people with long, previous criminal convictions or long ago removals are also seen as priorities. it doesn't always -- it's not just people who are convicted of a current crime. it could be somebody who has a

long ago record. especially those reinstatement of removal. previously removed, that's a large category. we removed so many people in the last decade or so, including a lot of border crossers who are re-entering the united states. there are a lot of unauthorized immigrants who have previous removals, previous criminal convictions but especially previous removals that make them priorities, even though they don't seem like priorities to community. the third reason that there's still so much fear is that a lot of the changes that simon is talking about, which i agree have -- you see them in the data. it's just the last two or three years they have become -- the administration has shifted on the interior enforcement. i think that it probably takes time for those changes to filter into people's consciousness, because in the previous three or five years, there was this close collaboration between local law enforcement and immigration enforcement that provoked a lot of fear. there has been a couple of

shifts, an increase in interior enforcement in the late years of the bush administration that carried over to the early obama administration and a pivot since 2011. we are starting to see the changes -- i think that it is a very different model that is now going on. >> i come to you today as just a recent graduate. i know that education in the usa is lacking in comparison to other countries and that a lot of people from other countries are coming in and getting american degrees, which i think is great. but if we open the borders, if we decide that, sure, everybody -- especially those with advanced degrees, especially someone who has gone through the economic crisis, graduated at that time, how can i -- i haven't yet decided if immigration reform is a good or bad thing. i'm still trying to decide all of that.

how can i not vote against myself and vote for the betterment of man? >> i mean, i think one answer that is -- i think most economists would say that if high skilled immigrants come and compete with you for a job, they also create jobs. i don't think -- i think most economists would say that highly skilled americans benefit more from high skilled immigration than they are harmed by it. but there are certainly some americans who compete with immigrants for jobs. i think that this view you are articulating is a concern for people. it's probably -- i think most economists would say that more people -- far more people are helped than harmed. they are people who think they are harmed who actually aren't harmed. because of positive stilloverpi

affect and they spend money and that generates jobs. from an economic perspective, you more benefit from other -- even people with similar backgrounds to yours coming here than you are harmed by it. >> you have raised something that we should have brought up before, too. the business community may very well push a republican house and senate to pass a narrower bill that would expand h-1 bv visas. they will get democratic support and would send it to the president who have would have some real issues there about whether you want to take that narrow piece of it legislatively. that may very well happen. >> of course, there are certainly a large number of democrats that will fight that saying, if we pluck off the easy one, then it's too hard to put a coalition together for the hard ones. that would be the debate. >> we have a problem of an aging population. we're not having as many

children. we need to refurbish the work force in america. there's way too many people like me who would spend my money on me than have children and spend it on them. >> the aging issue is a critical part of it. >> thank you all for being here and sharing your thoughts. i wanted to return to this question of the perception of the enforcement operations we are seeing in the u.s. i so what we are all about is providing access to legal services, due process and council for the folks who were a part of the interior immigration enforcement rates. so i think that the point that marc has made is a significant one, that the priorities are crafted in such a way that that 10,000 statistic, while significant, is under inclusive. and where he seeing over the past year, couple of years, an

enormous increase in the percentage of folks with see who never have the opportunity to see an immigration judge because they had perhaps an order, because they had an old removal order from years ago, something that under our complex immigration law precludes them from seeing a judge. that's not captured in the 10,000 number. but they have families here. to move on from that, i would like to ask a question of the panel for any of you interested in commenting. i think the other piece of this is that even if we accept the assumption that interior enforcement has changed, there's also the enforcement in the border. this summer, we saw family detention again. that hasn't come up today. i'm surprised. i would love to hear your thoughts. after years and years of struggle by the immigrant advocacy community to end detention of families and children, we again have all of a sudden, over the past few months, thousands of beds and

pro bono attorneys coming back and reporting on children who are sick and hungry. that is an important perception piece that is not playing out as much in the media as i would have expected. i would be interested to hear your thoughts. >> we can go into that. but that is the topic of our -- that's part of the topic of our after lunch panel. we're doing a panel. >> it's a different question from family detention, which is in the care and cussed tcustod opposed to unaccompanied children. >> it's true. that's the case. if anybody wants to answer to it, they can. i don't know that we have the expertise to answer to it fully. does anybody want to say anything about family detention? >> i mean, i think -- i don't think this is information that you don't know. but i think that one of the things the administration has argued is that it's important to

create a deterrent for families that are coming who don't have a legitimate asylum claim or who aren't -- who aren't eventually going to be able to stay here because if they are eventually going to get deported, it's better for people not to come at all. i think that that's the argument in favor of detaining certain families. but obviously, that argument only holds if you have a fair and faste adjudication process that distinguishes between people who get relief and who won't get relief. a lot of the conversation on the afternoon panel will talk about how you get adjudication process and that we need more -- a better process to -- for children and families. i have seen the same stories that you have. you are probably working directly with people. we have seen a lot of stories that families in those detention facilities are not getting abscess to counsel and not

getting a good due process. >> there's also a deterrent factor that the administration wanted to push. and i think some in congress wanted to push. because these kids -- these families, they break our hearts. i'm from central america. i know very well what's going on in those countries. i know all about gangs, the violence. these kids and these families are being exploited by drug dealers. they are -- it's the same path that drugs were smuggled through that are now -- it's now icing on the cake and a few more thousand dollars per head. they have a new source of business, smuggling kids. and exploiting kids. it's something that we must address. i think the united states needs to do more to help those

countries in country. i think part of the stuff that's happening is because there were people deported that had been members of gangs here and those countries were not prepared and they didn't have the institutions, were corrupt and could not deal with that and it's mushroomed where it's out of control and it's coming back to haunt us yet again. so this has got to be seen. for me this has to be seen in a very comprehensive way. there's no easy answer to it. it could be a very difficult situation right across our border. it already is. >> simon? >> a couple quick points. i think we should stipulate that part of the new challenges that we're all going to have is that everyone who has been working in this arena believed the immigration reform would pass and the volume of the undocumented immigrants would decrease and that that has not happened. let's be clear, the republicans

who control the house of representatives for another decade. the likelihood of us passing cir in the next ten years is remote. we had our shot. we didn't get it done. we now have to start i think as professionals and people who care about this start contemplating what it's going to be like to still have five, six, seven, eight, nine million people who are undocumented living in the country and the court systems being clogged, which is creating other ridiculous problems that we can't manage. the system was never really built to behave the it's behave behaving. the question is, does there need to be work by npi and others about thinking about, if we don't have cir, how do we mitigate some of the legitimate and serious problems we're having with due process and other things that are both on the border and in the current court system? the court system has become -- it doesn't work anymore. it's not really -- i want to be

clear. i'm not defending the immigration system in the united states. i've spent nine years trying to fix it. i think the administration has tried to make things better given they never believed they would have to deal with the current system. they thought they were going to change it and reform it. there wasn't a lot of thinking done about how to mitigate and manage the current system because we didn't think we would have it. we thought we would have a better system. the final point as we're running out of time and it's related to this and there has been fun stuff on twitter based on my comments today is that i just want to make this basic point. this is the thought exercise i want to leave with you, particularly those who work daily with real people. if the message coming from the media and the story that we are hearing earlier is that basically both parties are out to get you, right, and that you have come to this country to find a better life for your family and that even this guy,

obama and the democrats who you thought were your friends and they are turning on you and everyone is out to get you, that's one set of narratives and stories about acclamation and willingness to sign up for programs and that may come up with relief in the next six months, nine months. what happens if there's another story, a story that's true? which is that there's one political party that's actually gone out of their way -- they have listened and tried to pass -- i'm going to say this, pass comprehensive immigration reform has been blocked four times. >> whool he i'm going to self-d because havei have to talk on c. >> i'm still staying here. [ applause ] one political party is actually removed the threat of deportation from people in the interior. all the stuff we have covered.

to me, if that is possible to be true and telling stories to an immigrant community and not everybody is out to get you there are people -- >> i need you to wrap up. >> trying to make it better. i want to challenge you to think about whether those are important narratives and messages to tell to an aspiring immigrant community that would like to believe that america was more favorable to their presence than is currently being perceived in the media. thank you. >> okay. i'm sorry. i'm going to ask to you come up and ask your question individually. i need to close the panel in order for lunch and other people to meet other commitments. i do think that the new reality point is a real important and sobering take away. this has not been an optimistic picture that we see. but it may very well be the one that we need to live with. thank you very much. see you at 2:00. [ applause ]

more on the gop reaction to possible presidential action on immigration from "the washington post." john paboehner is considering expanding a lawsuit over the president's executive orders to include action on immigration. filing a separate lawsuit over the president's authority to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation is another option that gained traction thursday during talks among party leaders. boehner first announced plans to initiate a federal suit against obama in late june when he called the president's executive orders an unconstitutional power grab by one branch of government. again, that from "the washington post." now a final panel from the georgetown university event on

immigration. a judge discusses how overwhelmed and under resources the immigration court system is right now. the challenges and the complexity of the immigration legal system. >> i think we're going to get started. welcome back from lunch. i know it was a shorter perhaps than you like. we had fascinating panels this morning in addition to director rodriguez speaking. we started out well. the challenge for my panel will be to continue that. i know they are capable of doing that. in this panel, we're going to focus in particular with the treatment of unaccompanied minors in the united states as well as the situation for them and their sending country before they leave and if they are returned, what sort of plans

exist at least in one of the major sending countries. i just want to make -- say a couple words before i introduce our panelists. each of whom will talk for ten, 15 minutes and then we will open it up. once again, when we get to q and a, come down to the microphones and introduce yourselves. we know that the unaccompanied minors from three central american countries, salvador, honduras have become coming to the united states and in recent years the numbers started to increase. they increased gradually and then significantly, one would say. this year they were called a crisis. i want to remind us in the global context of crises, the arrival of this number of unaccompanied children, whether 60,000 people we're talking about, 90,000 or whatever, that

is not the definition of a crisis in the global community. a crisis is what is happening in syria and a crisis is what happens every time this huge movement of force migrants who have to flee for safety reasons. now, what the children have in common with many of those is that there's no question that the violence in their communities is one of the major factors in their flight. that's not something that's really been debated. many we have learned were coming to join families. we will have a full discussion of what's happened since they came here. we also learned very recently in the past year or two that more of them were younger and were more female. larger percentages of younger children and more girls. ask yourselves why.

to talk about what's going on in the sending country in terms of trying to ensure that kids don't have to flee violence and in terms of their returns if and when that takes place, we have ambassador altschul, the ambassador to the united states. next to him to talk about the way that the justice department, immigration courts in particular, are handling the increased numbers of children in a variety of ways, we have barbara leen, council to the director of the executive office from immigration review, directly to the ambassador's right, and to barbara's right we have maria woltjen, who is not only a professor at the university of chicago where she is a -- teaches a variety of

courses on immigration related issues, but she's the dreirecto of the young center for children's rights who has been working to develop a core of child advocates. for lawyers in the room, here is a different role that lawyers can play in the process when children arrive from abroad in a country. i have asked maria to talk about what her organization, the young center, does. how the most recent increases in numbers have affected the organization and particularly about the concept of best interests of the child and how that is being deployed and some of the challenges that. we will begin with ambassador altschul. some will sit. some will stand. i invited them do whatever is most comfortable. we will begin with you, ambassador. >> thank you very much. first of all, let me thank the organizers of this event for giving me the opportunity of

sharing this panel with such distinguished persons and with you all. as it was said by andrew, this is not knew. even the migration of unaccompanied children is not necessarily knew. just in the case of el salvador, in 2009, there's records of 1,200 unaccompanied children coming here to the united states. in year 2012, this increased to 3,300. fiscal year 2004, which is referred to as the crisis, when he 16,000 unaccompanied kids. so it is new but it has increased and has increased considerably. so one question is why. as i'm sure you all know, the

issue of migration -- there's not only -- there's not one single cause. there are multiple causes or push factors that have to do with migration. all of them exist right now in the case of he will sal have a dar, in the case of the northern triangle countries. it's always mentioned that economic reasons are fundamental cause. and it is true. people migrate because they cannot find the opportunities in their -- in their only countries to satisfy their most basic human needs. lack of jobs, lack of opportunities, health opportunities, education opportunities and so forth. so that's always been a push factor and a cause for migration. but things haven't gotten worse in el salvador. so that is not in itself an explanation of why the surge in unaccompanied children. the same could be said about the

security issues. it is true -- we are all living in a very violent situation. the crime rate, the gang violence and so forth clearly are push factors. actually, right now, honduras is the most violent country in the world. it's considered the most violent capital in the world there. this is a questionable membership that san salvador and el salvador had three years ago. so this is going on. it's true. they are push factors. in the case of el salvador, things haven't gotten worse. they have improved. so therefore, that by itself

doesn't explain either this surge. another important factor is the family reunification. again, talking about el salvador, we have thousands, 200,000 who have been living here, working here for at least 12 years, probably more. they left the country. they probably left their young children there. they haven't seen them in 10, 12 years. now they have the means, they have the stability. they say, this is the moment for me and i can pay for somebody to bring my kids back. so that is also a factor in all this. but, again, that itself does not explain the situation. what is it that has changed in my perception which explains this? it's basically i think an issue

of the smugglers. they had this covered that if they send a message that if the kids came to the states and they came in, they were not going to be deported. we know that they were telling people, you know, they will be -- they will get a green card. they might be given citizenship. so this is something that -- it was a marketing strategy, a very successful marketing strategy. i think that explains why. because what we are see -- i had the opportunity to visit the border three or four weeks ago. we were at a detention center. an opportunity to talk with a lot of mothers there. and the kids. and we asked, how long has the trip take? they say, ten days, 12 days, 15 days. we know traditionally this

journey took two months, three months. how did you travel? well, we took a bus. clearly, this is not the normal process of immigration that we have been used to for all this time. this is a new way. actually, it's referred to as the vip treatment or express treatment. we know people pay between eight, ten or $12,000 to bring one person in. so this is a big, big business. this is what explains without taking any relevance or importance to the other push factors, but this is why i think explains the surge. now i think it's important to also see that in these three issues, the economic situation, the security situation we are facing and the issue of family reunification, it is true that those are more the responsibility of our countries.

but it is also a shared responsibility with the united states. because if we are now seeing the effects of economic policies that have been coming for many, many years that create the demarginalized population and excluded the great numbers of our people, this was in part also the responsibility of the u.s. policy at those times supporting many military dictators in central america and regimes and supporting basically the ruling that supported this economic situation. in the case of the security, there is also some sort of shared responsibility. because the majority of the violence that we are receiving -- that we're having in our countries has to do with

drug trafficking. and we are unfortunately in a very important geographical situation because the drugs are produced in the south, consumed in the north and have to come through our country. it's based by geographical reasons we are suffering this. in terms of family reunification, i would say there is shared responsibility because many of them, policies -- migration policies that you very well know have prevented -- at least has not facilitated this family reunification process. so i say this not because i want to blame anybody. but to say, the solution to the problems are still a matter of mutual cooperation and shared responsibility. what is the solution? there are short-term responses, of course, to the crisis.

we have reinforced our offices in the border states. we have opened a new consulate general in texas. we have increased our cooperation with the u.s. authorities. we have improved our reception capacity and capabilities in el salvador. we are organizing networks of support at the local level throughout our consulates to provide support for the kids that are going to eventually stay here or while they are still here in legal assistance, education, medical health -- mental health is very important and so forth. but we are very clear that the solution is a main responsibility but it's an opportunity for joint and shared cooperation.

at this moment, you might remember that a couple of weeks ago the three central american presidents were here in washington, had a meeting with president obama to analyze the situation of the kids. and one of the things that came out there was that the countries would prepare with the help of the idb a plan to address the situation. this plan has already -- it's already in the works. it's still a road map. but i think it has very important innovations. one, it's prepared by the countries. it is not as other plans, economic development plans that were basically elaborated here or through the multilateral institutions. this is something the work of our three governments working

together, which is very important. it's not very easy the three countries come together and come with a plan. second, the idea is not to do a big development plan but to focus on the specific territories which produce the largest number of migrants. so it's to implement concrete projects in those territories to provide better security, better job opportunities, better education, better healthcare in order to create the conditions that would if not prevent at least mitigate the migration. that is what we are -- we know very well -- we believe that that's the way to go. we can do short-term solutions, but unless we address the root cause of migration, which is providing better conditions, security, economic and opportunities of life, we will

not be able to stop that phenomenon. so i would like to leave it here. i will gladly answer questions. >> thank you very much, ambassador. i will ask each of our panelists to speak first and then we will open it up to questions. barbara. >> thank you. thank you very much for having me here this afternoon. as many of you know, after the kids came through this summer, there was a lot of focus on their immediate care, immediate feeding and shelter. our agency focused a little bit more on what the long-term wait to process these children are. because after they go through the border and they go through where they will be temporarily and they are reunified, they come to us. for their legal proproceedings. they are typically with us for quite a bit of time with respect

to their legal proceedings and how they are processed through the system. so i'm going to talk about some of the changes that happened at our agency with respect to processing some of the kids and then i will speak to representation and then a bit about some of our next steps. many of you know, one of the things we did in response to the influx this summer was that we added groups to our pre-existing party for detained cases. what that meant was that we were prioritizing the indications of recent border crossers which was defined as people who came on or after may 1. dls identifies who those people are. typically, it's four different categories. aun companied children, adults with children who are detained, adults with children released into the alternative detention program and all other detained aliens. so those are -- i will use --

they are recent border priority caseload. i will focus on the kid because that's the topic of this discussion. we started processing priority cases july 18. so what that means is that when we get a party case as identified by dls as unaccompanied child, that child receives their first hearing no less than ten days and no more than 21 days from the dls filing with the immigration court. that goal is just for their first hearing. we need to make sure that they get in and start their case within that 21-day period. one thing that's on everyone's mind and we get asked a lot about is representation and access to legal services for the children. we work really closely with other government agencies as well as non-profit organizations to explore ways in which we as

the court system can assist in trying to help these kids get access to legal services. this summer we issued some guidance with respect to how to utilize friend of the court services. in the past we have issued guidance to immigration judges on how to exploy child friendly court practices and reiterated that with our judges as we knew they were going to see more cases. the procedures that they can take to improve pro bono participation in the court system. we created specialized children's dockets that see children so that we can ensure that children are not coming to court at the say the time as adults. so those child friendly proceeders can be implemented in that special time when the kids are there. in addition, we expanded immigration judge training. we expanded the legal orientation program for the

custodians of unaccompanied alien children. it's important to note that that program is something that the office of refugee resettlement -- our program focused on the custodians. when the kids are with their custodians, we provide services to them to let the custodians know what's going on, let them under what's happening to the child. help them understand what their responsibilities are with respect to making sure the child comes to court, making sure they know what resources are available to them for legal access. the other thing that we did this summer, because that program, the lopc program is what we call it, doesn't operate everywhere. we expanded a national call center that allows custodians in areas where this program is not currently operational to be able to call in and ask questions, understand what's going on with

the kids, you know, get an understanding of what they have to do, what the kids have do whether th when they get to court and to help them understand what resources might be available in the communities to help them. in addition, some of you probably saw, we announced this summer a partnership with the corporation for national community service. a lot of you know that as the americorps or vista program. $2 million of its funds to start what's called the justice americorps program, where we will be funding about 100 attorneys and paralegals to provide direct representation to qualifying children. these are typically children that are under -- that are 15 years of age and younger who are going to immigration court. we expect that to be operating in about 15 cities. it's basically what you can imagine. we're utilizing the americorps program to get lawyers into the

courtrooms with the kids. it's a new partnership. it's exciting. we expect the attorneys and the paralegals to be on the ground in the court in about january, the beginning of the year. i think for us, we're anxiously anticipating that program getting on the ground and operating in a lot our courts. we're happy -- we work very closely with the office of refugee resettlement because they also fund programs to provide legal services to the children. so we work in tandem to make sure we're trying to get adequate coverage in the country. also to set up programs that will allow us to study what the impact of direct legal representation is for the kids. we understand that it's important that when we have government programs to look at them, see what they do both sort of on a more anecdotal level in terms of social science

gathering with respect to conversations about how the kids feel when they go through, but then also just the hard statistics about what impact this could have on the court system. so we're working on that with the justice americorps program. we launched a small representation pilot in baltimore where we're going to have some direct legal services there as well. so in addition to that, we are under going a lot at outreach. a see of couple of faces that i know i met with this summer and probably will continue to meet with this year. right now our director and deputy direct rer in texas. tle go together six cities that have the most unaccompanied alien children in them in order to meet with legal service providers and adjudicators and people on the ground in the cities to see what it is that the agency can do to help process the kids through the

immigration court in a way that assists the legal services groups in the area in being able to have access to provide the kids greater levels of legal services. so we're trying to go out, understand what's happening on the ground in the courts and work with the communities in order to make sure that we are working together to try and make sure that these kids get through the legal process the first time in a way that makes everybody very comfortable. in addition, we're having model hearing programs to try and train the non-profit attorneys. i think a lot of you are immigration attorneys. you know what you are doing when you get to court. sometimes you get a real estate attorney in there who is doing a good pro bono effort, but you want to make sure they are trained. we're working -- our judges are volunteering to go in and try and teach some of the real estate attorneys how immigration court goes. so those are a few things we're doing to try and work together

with groups, with the national groups, local groups to try and increase the access to legal services. a lot of people are asking us, great, you have this caseload, we get it. what about everyone else? what about my client who have i been working with for several years and not to put too fine a point on it, but as those cases of those kids and some of the recent border crossers and our detained caseload are priorities, there are other cases that are not. what ends up happening is that some of the cases for non-detained individuals who are not considered priority caseload do get bumped back. they get bumped out further. you don't have to tell me that those cases are waiting a long time in our court system. we know. so we are evaluating options what to do with those cases that are going off the calendar or going way far another into the

future for hearings. we have made our resource needs very clear. i think the administration has done a good job in making our resource needs very clear. we're continuing a hiring effort. we should get about 25 new judges on this year. we're looking -- we recently advertised 48 immigration judge positions in anticipation of a budget that i hope some day will come from congress. that will tell us what we can do and how many judges we can hire. hearing time is our most precious asset. a lot of times in the immigration court. we simply need more judges and we need more court staff to support the judges. so we are trying to hire what we can and we're making our case. the administration is making its case to congress with respect to the resources we need to handle the caseload that we have that's increasing. the other thing we're looking at is we're trying to find ways on

the margins to increase some of the efficiencies in immigration court. seeing what we can do about trying to encourage prehearing conferences, doi ining profferse normal course of a court proceeding that aren't typically institutionalized program 'tises in immigration court to see how we can more -- to utilize some of the resources and institutionalize some of the practices in a way that allows us to efficiently process the cases while making sure everybody is heard. i like forward to taking any of your questions. >> okay. thank you very much, barbara. >> i'm going to stand up. >> exlencellent ma,excellent, m >> i want to thank you for inviting me here today. it's great to talk to you and see so many faces that i know. i have to say, after this morning's panel, the last panel,

a lot of this is going to seem pie in the sky. it did to me after the last panel because we are advocating a best interest standard for unaccompanied children and that all decisions be made in accordance with the child's best interests. but i also think that we need to keep our eye on what may happen next and also going back to this morning's panel, if they are right and they all seem to agree, if the democrats lose the senate, if the house moves farther to the right, we may all start seeing children being deported in significant numbers. so i want to start with really what's going to be my last point, which is that in all of our other systems in the u.s. when we move a child, there's a process. we have what's called an interstate compact. in our 50 states if we move a child from illinois to california, california is

involved, illinois is involved and there's an assessment of whether that child will be safe if he is moved. child protective services, if a child is removed from the home because of abuse, five relatives come forward because of abuse, five relatives come forward to take care of that child, they're all vetted. and it's the same with o.r. they don't release a child without going through the process of looking at that sponsor. but in our current system, we have nothing in place for ensuring that child will be safe, and we have really no system in place for even making a minimum inquiry about that. so i want to add what andy said in the beginning about what's happening right now. the number of children arriving at the border has decreased, or our beds are at about 65% capacity. so the numbers today are each day approximately 55 children

are arriving at the border. in june, it was 300 children a day. so it's a significant drop. the causes are uncertain. we don't yet know. we don't yet know if it's going to be as a result of the hot weather at the end of the summer. or if there are other reasons, for example, bolstered borders by guatemala, mexico deporting many more children beefing up enforcement. what we do know is the children are being deported from the mexico border. the mexico/guatemala border. and the violence has not abated in the three central american countries. 68,000 children arrived last year, and they are here. as barbara pointed out, the initial impact was on office of refugee resettlement, but -- and they modified their systems for releasing children, but now this is all going to hit the

immigration courts and all of the other systems. it's really going to start impacting how these agencies work. so we're based at the university of chicago, and we serve as child advocate for unaccompanied children. and this is very similar in child protection systems to a best-interest guardian ad litem. i will also tell you we have no best-interest statute in our immigration law. but having said that, that's our job, and so we advocate for their best interests, even in the absence of the law. child advocate was provided for in the tdpra of 2008. it provides that hhs has the authority to appoint independent child advocates. and in a slightly backwards way says the role is to advocate for

the best interests of the child. i think one of the things that's really important about that law is it requires the child advocates be independent. we are not the attorneys who represent the children, even though some of us are attorneys who work on these cases. we don't work for the attorneys representing the children. we also don't work for any agencies that provide any other services. home studies, post-release services, or care and custody. and why is this important? because oftentimes we have to advocate with all of these different services providers. and sometimes even with attorneys, we do see situations in which kids are represented by attorneys who are hired by traffickers in the case of chinese kids. so we get involved in those cases. and sometimes we're arguing that a child has a case when she may have been screened initially and we may have a lot more information. so we're going back and advocating on behalf of that child. we don't get assigned to all of

the children, only the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. so tender-age kids where there's a custody issue, a child who has a mental health issue, a child who has been abused, a girl who's pregnant as a result of rape, a child who's recognized by everybody in the system as being at risk if he's returned, but he won't give enough information. he won't talk about what happened to him. and yet everybody in the shelter, the lawyers, lots of people think this kid is going to be at risk if he is sent back to his home country. so what's been the impact of the influx on our organization? well, first of all, we're just unbelievably busy. we have an office in harlingen, texas, where most of the kids are coming in. those cases are the most difficult and complicated. very young children. you know, situations of abuse. situations where we don't know who the parents are. and then we have an office in

chicago. and i think the influx has affected a lot of what the government is doing right now. so although there was a provision in the law providing for expansion of child advocate programs, it hasn't happened until now. so the government has asked us to open offices in three locations, houston, new york and washington, d.c. so that's just one of the side things that have happened as a result of the influx. so our philosophy, though, is that best interests should be driven by children's rights. and so what this means is that what the child wants is very, very important. and in most cases, we will not go against that unless the child's safety is at issue. we can't just say that honduras is dangerous and he shouldn't go back. we have to have very fact-specific information about that child.

we have to be subject to cross-examination, by the child's attorney, by the judge, by the trial attorney. we have to prove what we're saying. okay. best interests, i just want to talk a little bit about that. first of all, it's the law of all 50 states. it's also the law, obviously, of the convention on the rights of the child and the crc, that language in the crc came from our laws. and yet when it comes to immigrant children, there is no best-interest standard. so what does best interests mean? well, there's really not a precise definition. it really varies case by case, depending on the child's situation. but in state court, it means that a judge, when they're placing a child or making a decision about that child, has to consider is the child going to be safe? is the child going to be separated from family against a child's will or against the parents' will?

and is this what the child wants? so this is really -- i would say this is also really important for immigrant children and that we they'd to have a system in place where we make an assessment of whether a child will be safe, whatever the decision is, whether the child is going to stay or is going to return, that the child should be able to express their own opinion and that we will only oppose that child's expressed wishes if he or she is going to be in danger. so we don't have federal law to look to. so we have to look to international law, convention on the rights of the child, we look at comparative law, cases from other countries, and then we look at the law of the state where the child is in custody and we analyze the child's case according to those factors. and then we take that information, put it into a report, and then put it in the hands of the decision-maker, be it the immigration judge, the i.c.e. officer, whoever, o.r.r., whoever is making a decision

about that child. so i said earlier we don't have best-interest standard, but i also would like to say there has been progress. so over the last year, agencies have been involved in getting together as a group with ngos to develop a best-interest framework for unaccompanied children. and they're doing this in the absence of an actual statute. this is being done through the interagency working group on unaccompanied children. it's a project funded by the mcarthur foundation. and the idea is to come out with

a framework so that people in these agencies can take the child's best interests into consideration when making decisions. it is not going to be required. nobody is going to sign this document certainly. but it will, when it's finished, be a document that everyone participated in drafting. and i just want to be clear about best interests. this does not mean that the decision-maker, the immigration judge or i.c.e., has to make a decision that is in the child's best interests. that judge can also consider safety to the community, national security. there may be a myriad of other factors that that judge can consider. but what it means is that judge has to look at what's in that child's best interests, that child's safety, and that it should be a very important factor, especially if we're going to be removing a child, separating them from family, from all they know. it should be a factor. so, okay. back to what's happening right

now. as barbara said, it's prioritizing cases involving children. they're getting speedier times when they have to appear in court. some judges are still granting lengthy continuances, but some judges are granting much shorter continuances. and as you all know, kids have to find their own attorneys. i also think it's fantastic that all of the government agencies, eoar and o.r.r. are working to provide attorneys for kids. and i think that's also another side benefit to the influx is that agencies are much more concerned with having attorneys for the kids. i also think -- and this is my own personal belief -- that neither judges nor immigration officers like having to make a decision about a child in front of them without an attorney representing them. and so i think that there's an impetus in the agencies to have representation for kids. the other fantastic thing that's happened is that there are now dockets for released children. so it used to be, for example, in chicago, a child who is released in or around chicago came to court, any given day of the week, any given time to any different judge, and so there was absolutely no way for anybody to serve these kids. no way for a lawyer to be present and represent all the

kids. and that's changed. eoar is now having all of its courts set up dockets for released children. i think this is really important and a big step towards getting representation for these kids. so here's the other reality about right now. we're really not deporting kids right now. the kids who came in recently during this recent influx, they are not being removed. but -- and this goes back to that earlier panel today, which was pretty much doom and gloom, if things change, we may start seeing lots of kids deported in very significant numbers. so i think we're really faced with two problems when it comes to kids. has that child been able to access protection? and that just goes back to did they get a lawyer?

and then even if they have a lawyer, are they going to qualify for any of the forms of relief that are available? because our system for the most part was built for adults. i also think that there's a misconception among some, although probably nobody in this room, but among others that if the child is determined not to be eligible for any form of relief, he'll be safe if he goes back. and i think that's really untrue. first of all, many kids still don't have attorneys. i think it is nigh impossible for children to get emigration relief without an attorney. nobody is going to disagree with that. i think pro bono programs are fantastic and really critical, but there needs to be money for the agencies that have to mentor those attorneys. as barbara said, that real estate attorney really doesn't know what he's doing when he goes into immigration court without an organization backing him up. i think asylum is very difficult to establish.

it's difficult for an adult. it's difficult for a child that on-account-of language and these five factors. these kids have to make that same case, and it's really difficult. we do have special immigrant juvenile visas for kids who have been abused, abandoned and neglected. it's wonderful. it's a good law. i think, you know, countries in europe are very envious that we have this law. very imperfect. in chicago, in cook county, children cannot get into our juvenile court if they are detained, for the most part. in lots of parts of the country, it's impossible to get into juvenile -- excuse me, juvenile court for a variety of reasons. and so we really do need a best-interest standard because a lot of these kids, even if they go through the system, even if they get a lawyer sometime, there may not be any form of relief available to them. so i just want to talk a little bit, too, go the gap cases. and that's what i mean by kids who don't qualify. and that was a term coined by andy. so, you know, what it means is the child's case doesn't fit

neatly within a form of protection. but it's not in the child's best interests, safety or well-being for him to return. so a couple of examples. child's parents are in the united states. 12-year-old boy in home country, let's say honduras, is living with grandparents. one of the grandparents dies. the grandmother gets really ill and can no longer take care of the child. so she sends the child to the united states. his parents are here. his parents are undocumented. so what's in this child's best interests? he wants to do the right thing. he wants to go to court. he wants to do all that's expected of him. but he's not going to qualify for these forms of relief. and yes, there is prosecutorial discretion. and in some places, that is

available. the trial attorney will exercise discretion. but that child still has no avenue for permanency, and really, it's another person added to the 11 million in this country. it's also very difficult in some jurisdictions to get prosecutorial discretion. another example, a girl from china, she comes, everybody knows she's got all these kids come, they get smuggled over here. the parents typically make the arrangement. and the kid has an $80,000 debt. she's still in custody. she hasn't begun working. and so she's destined for trafficking. but the trafficking hasn't yet happened. and the second problem is how does she prove coercion? it was her parents who sent her. now, i would argue that you do what your parents say. in not my kids, but lots of other people's. but she's got -- that's a burden of proof for her in establishing trafficking for labor case. so then there are the cases that i think are really complicated for judges.

where the child -- and we've seen this a lot -- and we call it detention fatigue. a child has been in custody for a very long period of time. and they've given up. it's a child who's probably eligible for some form of relief. you know, my example is, says two of my friends were killed. i know i'll be killed if i go back, and i want to go home. so we recently had a case involving a 17-year-old boy from central america. he fled. his mother was a drug trafficker. he was deeply distressed by that

and wanted to get away from her. his dad died when he was very young. and he was being threatened by the gangs. so not an uncommon situation. in the u.s., he was hoping to reunify with a man. he was an american tourist he had met. and it was determined that this guy had -- he was a registered sex offender. so there was an investigation. office of refugee resettlement obviously determined this boy cannot be released to this man, but the boy had no other sponsors in the united states. he's been detained for five months. and he just can't take it anymore. and i want to say, you know, shelter, people who work there are absolutely wonderful. the kids are cared for very well. but you're locked up. you cannot leave. many places. you have to be escorted from one room to another. it's really tough on kids to be in custody. but the child tells his attorney, i want to go. i want you to ask for voluntary departure. and if you can't get that, i

want removal. so this child has a child advocate, and the child advocate goes to the judge and tells the judge all the reasons this child won't be safe. he's got nobody to go back to. he's been threatened by the gangs. he has said and even said in the court that he wants a quick death. it's better for him than sitting in custody. so what should happen? the judge listens in this case but doesn't know what to do because there's no guidance on a case like this. what our judge in chicago does is punt. she will continue the case for a month, and she'll tell the child i'm going to continue and ask the child, is that okay? and most kids are going to say yes, judge, that's fine. and then she'll admonish everybody to work really hard to get this child out of this restrictive placement. and in most cases, the child will change his or her mind. not in every case, but in many cases. but that doesn't solve the larger issue, which is that this judge is being called on to make a decision about a child when knowing or having factual information that this child might not be safe if that order of removal is issued. so i think we need a plan, a process. i also think, you know, we're all in this together. this is a regional problem. we have to work with el salvador, honduras, guatemala to figure out what's going to

happen next if kids are going to be deported. as you heard this morning, families are being deported. it's not yet happening to children, but we don't know what's going to happen in the next few months. we certainly thought it was going to happen at the beginning of the summer. and from what we've been told, nothing is really taken off the table at this point. so it could still happen. and so one of the questions is what are the sending countries doing? are they going to be capable of receiving thousands of kids back in their countries? so i just want to go back to my original point, which was in our country, in every system, we have a system in place before we send a child, we check to make sure they're going to be safe. we check to make sure there aren't red flags. at the very least, there are no red flags to say this child is going to be in danger if he goes back. and really at essence, when it comes to determining best interests, that's what it is about. it is about safety. so thank you very much for your attention.

[ applause ] >> thank you very much, maria. so why is immigration law different from every other aspect of american law? we'll pick that up after you have a chance to start asking questions. so for those who would like to pose any questions to our panelists, please come forward to the mics. and i'll ask that you identify yourself. and if you're directing your attention to any particular panelist, to let that panelist know who you're directing your questions to. thanks. >> hi. i'm diane eikenberry. i'm a senior attorney, and i work with detained children in o.r. custody in virginia and maryland. i sort of have two questions but they're related to training and stakeholder relations and sort of two parts for barbara and maria. first maria, i want to thank you so much for the wonderful work that the young center does. >> thanks. >> i've had the pleasure of working with one of your child advocates out of the office in harlingen.

you make a great difference. i'm so excited you're opening new offices because we need more of your work. >> thanks. >> but barbara, you mentioned there's expanded training for the immigration judges. can you speak a little bit about that? and also maybe generally about what kind of training, if any, is required for immigration judges around issues relating to these unaccompanied minors. >> so we have done some training with the immigration judges, you know. some of you know because of budgetary issues, we've had to have our conferences on dvd for our judges. we had planned a conference actually this summer, a live

in-person conference that we had to postpone in part because of the surge, and we didn't want to take all the judges off the dockets for a week. but we are planning on having a conference at some point where we expect to have a full day of a kid's track for -- for the judges that handle kids' cases. and, you know, like maria's a frequent appearer at all of those. you know, we really do try and bring in the outside experts, bring in the people who do some of the work more directly with the kids, the stuff that comes before they get to see the judge. so, you know, and we listen -- we'll reach out to some of the judges and say what are you interested in knowing more about? you know, we look at what's happening sort of this summer and, you know, have looked at what are things that might be more important? you know, should we have a particular panel on, you know, asylum claims that are really specific to these types of kids so? so we anticipate having a full day just for kids. and i expect, what i understand from the judges i've talked to, i expect it's going to be really popular given the fact that we

have so many judges now hearing the kids' cases. and when we have our training, we record it all. so that, like, if there's a judge who really wants to go to another panel at that time, they can request to see it at another time like on dvd. you know, we understand that training is important. so we are expanding it with respect to dealing with the kids and how to make sure that procedures are appropriate for the kids and to the specialized needs of what the kids both need in a courtroom and there are types of relief that are just for them, right? like special immigration juvenile status, you know. that's just for them. so to talk about what some of those things are as well. >> professor, may i ask a question? >> sure, go ahead. >> maria, just speaking of stakeholder relations, you mentioned the best-interest document, this being worked on by the interagency working group. is that the main way in which the young center has had relations with dhs? do you guys have another -- any other sort of stakeholder relationships, especially with the office of chief counsel, and do you anticipate this is a

document, once completed, that could be, you know, we could be providing or sort of collaborating with the trial attorneys? >> yeah, i mean, we work with all of the agencies. and i just have to say that -- i mean, dhs has been one of the really good agencies to work with. i mean, the enforcement people have been wonderful. and again, i go back to this point that i think those charged with enforcement and decision-making have a really hard time having to do this with a child. in terms of the document, you know, we hope to finish it in the next couple of months. it has to go to the full interagency. it's been a subcommittee. it has to go to the full interagency working group, and that's all of the agencies plus ngos, most of whom are in this room today. and yes, that will be shared. i mean, it will be in two pieces. one will have footnotes. and the other piece, though, will be kind of a step-by-step here's what you would do if you're in the field to make sure you're looking at a child's best interests. so yes, that will -- that's the intention is to share it widely. yes. >> sounds wonderful.

thank you. >> thanks for those questions, diane. we'll go from side to side. on this side, please identify yourself. >> my name is constance freeman, and i work with the community outreach program. i work with a lot of the children after the o.r.r. process. so i see them months, sometimes years, after they've been released from the shelters. and i'm concerned, one about how many of the 14 to 15-year-olds specifically that are not enrolled in school. and i want to know, how can we get that collaboration with the agencies to make sure that they are staying in school? because i don't have a problem with accepting children and making sure they're in school, but if they're 14 years old and they're out, i'm not sure that we're not putting them at risk, that they're run ago way from. and then also, i have a follow-up question for the ambassador from el salvador.

i was amazed at how many children in those three countries are not in school. and i noticed in one of the south american countries, kids get, like, 80 or something to go to school, and if they get good grades, they get 100 bolivianos. i was wondering if those three countries could use funds from the multinational companies to fund so that the kids are in school and they're not coming here without a day of education. >> so, i mean, i'll take the first question. i mean, i think there aren't enough resources anywhere. none of the agencies -- well, eoar doesn't have enough or o.r.r. doesn't have enough. i will also say that recently i've heard that o.r.r. is doing a lot to start providing more post-release services for children. and i think they've recently issued grants to start providing -- so after the child is released, there's somebody who

is available to stay in contact, a social worker, for example. and to help make sure the kids go to school. so, again, though, i mean, i think some of it goes back to resources. and of course, everybody wants the kids in school, but i think we need more resources so that there can be more post-release services for the kids. and i agree that after the kids get released -- i mean, sometimes they're even more vulnerable than when they're in custody. a child advocate stays with the child to the extent that the child wants. kids can lose us, if they really want to. but i think this -- you know, we need these post-relief services for many more kids. >> you were right. one of the -- unfortunately, we have so many other countries with fairly low level of school attendance. now, a couple of things. the new government has established three priorities.

one of them being education. so education is going to be a priority in this administration. second, there is a program that's starting now of conditional cash transfer precisely around those lines to give some economic support to families that keep the kids in school. similar to something that's happening already in terms of health. there's a task condition program to support mothers who take regularly their kids to the health clinics for control and so forth. and the third thing is that ironically, one of the reasons that we have had a lot of youth involvement in the gangs is that at some point during the '80s, in order to make more efficient the school infrastructure, schools started working on two

shifts. so kids would be -- go in the morning, a group of kids would be in school in the morning, and another group of kids would go in the afternoon. what happened is that you have a lot of kids having a lot of free time. and this was something that created, among other things, many other things, but this also was a part of why a lot of kids joined the gangs. so one of the things that are being done now is to expand the program called full-time schooling. the idea is to keep the kids as much time as possible in the school doing extracurricular activities. >> thank you. >> thank you. thank you very much. my name is anna gutierrez. i'm a state legislator here in maryland. originally from el salvador. many questions, but i want to concentrate on something that we

have been advocating for both locally, we formed a d.c., maryland and virginia coalition to work with the students. and i think many of us in the audience probably are dealing more with what to do with those students once they come to our neighborhoods and in our states because it doesn't end with the federal role. but the federal role is important. one of the issues that we did was bring up service providers from around the nation to seek the legal representation issue. and i'm surprised that you haven't mentioned or anybody has mentioned the disparities in the way that the legal -- the courts are working. . we raised it, and what we saw are some states like maryland has a very friendly -- it has the first hearing, according to

your 21-day guideline, and then maybe the second one with sufficient time to prepare to get legal representation. there are other states, new york and california, where the service providers are just -- are just in desperation because of the rocket dockets. could you address, what are the possibilities of your organization, barbara, to provide something more than just a 21-day guidance? because the response we heard was that a lot of the immigration courts are being left to the discretion of the state and of that court. and therefore, you're seeing this in unequal application and practices from one state to the other. and i think that's a very serious concern.

>> so i just want to clarify that your question is about the immigration court system and not the juvenile court system in the state. >> no, not the juvenile court. no, the ones who are dealing with the children, the ones that have that first hearing. >> right. i mean, the two are bizarrely interconnected, as maria mentioned. >> juvenile courts are state court. >> correct. >> they're not being called to a juvenile court. they're being called -- >> well, some of them are. with respect to -- one thing that's really interesting about this group of cases for our system, which can be very frustrating at times, is that some of the relief that is available to these children, and the relief that they seek, is adjudicated outside our court system. and so one of the forms of

relief that they seek is special immigration juvenile status. so when a judge is trying to figure out, you know, how much time he should give a child that's looking to seek special immigrant juvenile status, they have to figure, okay, well, uscis is going to have to adjudicate a benefits application. before the kid can go foreward, they have to go to state court juvenile proceedings. and so, you know, that does provide a real logistical challenge for us because there are states in which, you know, and counties in which, you know, as maria mentioned, a child can go to state court proceedings and get an order in three days. there are other places, chicago being one of them, where it takes just a really long time. and so when a judge is trying to figure out when to reschedule the kid, those things can come in. now, with respect to what our guidance has been to judges for immigration court, the guidance that we give immigration judges is nationwide. right? so it's not -- >> we're limited. >> we have one immigration court that has 59 locations. it's like what we like to say is the guidance that we give

judges. it doesn't vary by being in one state or another. the guidance that we've given is that the children that are identified by dhs as priority cases get their first hearing within 21 days. thereafter, the judge can continue -- if the child asks for a continuance, can continue the case in accordance with the law that's on the books right now. it's a good-cause standard. and then the judge determines in his or her discretion how long that continuance should be. and that -- and so it will vary with respect to the facts and circumstances of the particular case. >> what we've heard is that as routine in these two states, they are being called for their second appearance very shortly after the first appearance, without any possibility of legal representation to be, one, identified, and two, to be prepared.

and that that is really even interfering because they then have to go in and file another motion. i'm not a lawyer, but this is what i've heard over and over again is what's been happening. so it seems to me that because you are one centralized system with 59 representatives, that clarification of what would be expected. and even if there is no best interest of the child in written law, clearly in every state, i can tell you in my state, that is the guiding principle. and if that is not what is in practice being respected, i think there's something wrong. >> right. so we did issue guidance on september 10th. that specifies that there are no -- there are no extra laws relating to how short continuances need to be or how long they need to be with respect to children. only just that they do take a

priority on the docket so that the continuance should be granted with respect to the facts and circumstances of the case rather than the court's docket. so, you know, we heard this concern, and we did issue guidance on september 10th. yes? >> yes. go right ahead. thanks. >> my name is ashima. i'm an immigration attorney turned documentary filmmaker. we're working on a film specifically about this issue, central american refugees filming in central america but also some of the issues that we're seeing in the u.s. my question is more for barbara as well. i wanted you to address some of the concerns identified by attorneys who have been volunteering at our facility.

i know that's, you know, a family detention center, but nevertheless, some of the concerns that's putting it lightly, just some of the fast-track deportations, the no access to sometimes translators, interpreters, long-distance judges who aren't well versed in the law or the cases. i know things are improving, but from, you know, some of the reports i read, and people i talked to, it's nowhere near where it should be. >> do you have a specific concern in mind that you want me to address? >> well, i mean, i haven't read anything because i have been researching this particular topic. i haven't read anything that the government has put forth to talk about artesia, but i read a lot from attorneys. >> right. so i think with -- you know, with respect to family detention, i guess it's somewhat germane given that there are children there, too. they're not accompanied. you know, with respect to the

detention of families, you know, the artesia facility was put up quickly in response to the surge this summer. i think what's frustrating for i think us as an agency is that so much of the detention center and the concerns with respect to the detention center are out of our hands with respect to decision-making. you know, i.c.e. handles detention. so when there are larger issues that i think people have brought to our attention, you know, so, for example, people have said, look, the tvs there are really tiny. and so when the judge is beaming in, you know, what you see on the side of the detainee is, you know, the individual -- the families who are there, they're having a hard time seeing the judge.

when we hear that kind of stuff, and people are very vocal with us to let us know what the issues are, you know, we can't buy new tvs and install them, right? dhs does that. it's their facility. what we can do is go to dhs and say look, we'd really like to change these tvs out. and so i think what we're doing is on a very daily basis, having a lot of conversations with our counterparts at dhs about how to respond to some of the things that we can respond to. i think a lot of the criticism that we've heard overall from some of the advocates is that there is, you know, a generalized belief that families shouldn't be detained. right? and so, to the extent that that's -- that that is what we're hearing, you know, i with tell you that that is -- you know, that's a decision that's

made sort of out of my hands, and certainly out of my logistical hands. and so one of the things we also heard was, look, you've got judges in one time zone. you've got artesia in another time zone. that's causing just confusion. so we changed from the judges in arlington hearing the cases to the judges in denver hearing the cases because now they're all in the same time zone. and so we are trying -- we're also working a lot, i think, with, you know, the bar in denver even before the cases got moved to denver were really active in trying to do pro bono with the folks in artesia. and so, you know, denver was a good spot because we thought we could assist in trying to make it a little easier on some of the pro bono attorneys there. so i think we're doing what we can, you know, recognizing that, you know, we have to continue a dialogue with people. about what are the things we can do, particularly some of the smaller, you know, what are some of those small things that seem, well, why can't you just do it? why can't you just buy the bigger tvs kind of thing, right? and working with our partners. i mean, understanding, of course, that there are a lot of limitations on us as the agency dealing with the detention center that we don't have control over. >> thank you, barbara. thank you. >> hi there.

my name is deana. i'm a student here at georgetown law. i'm here with fellow classmates of mine. we are part of a campus organization that has created the international migrants bill of rights. and our specific project this semester is focused on detention centers in mexico. and we are creating a list of indicators to suggest that these detention centers go through. my indicator is focused on family unification. so i was wondering if anyone on the panel is able to offer myself and my classmates some advice and realities on what is going on in these detention centers, specifically with unaccompanied minors, whether their family or guardians are in mexico or country of origin or in the united states. >> excellent start to conducting research on that issue. >> it's due thursday. >> does anybody want to tell deana what we know about that situation? to the extent we know anything? >> i don't know much at all. >> why don't we know much? maria? >> because we need students to

do some research. and tell us what's going on. >> we're all looking forward to reading your results. >> and you need to travel there and talk to people and really -- yeah, and figure out what's going on. >> if georgetown funds our travels, that would be great. >> i'm focused on new mexico right now. >> so perhaps, though, the ambassador, you talked about, i guess, both having a consulate in border states. i assumed you were talking about u.s. border states. but after all, mexican southern border plays a huge role here. maybe the borders of other states on the way up for the children particularly in roles here. do we know anything about that? >> well, what we have done is, we are mostly working with guatemala in establishing a

joint consulates in mexico, particularly in the road, or the path of the migrants. so the idea is that if guatemala has a consulate in this town and we don't have one, that we can share those facilities and vice versa. we have increased our conversations with the mexican government also to try to provide a little bit more protection to the migrants. and i don't have any specifics on how this is going. what i can tell you is that there is an excellent network of shelters and of efforts provided by civil society who are doing an incredible, incredible job in assisting the migrants, providing them with shelter, with food, et cetera. and there is -- there's a serious, serious network of these type of support going on in mexico.

i think more than -- i'll leave it like that. >> okay. thank you. >> have you had good cooperation with the mexican government over these issues? >> in some cases, yes. there have been, as you are very well aware, very horrendous incidents that happened. a group of 60, 70 migrants had been killed. in those cases, there have been sometimes mixed results because it is presumed that there is involvement of -- at certain levels of some authorities. the drug dealers are a big problem, a big problem. it is very clear that drug trafficking network is now together with the smuggling. and as i mentioned before, it's become even in some cases, they say better business to human trafficking and smuggling than

drug trafficking. >> thank you. mr. ambassador. ashley. >> good afternoon. my name is ashley. i'm with the georgetown institute for women, peace and security. the panel mentioned that we're seeing a particularly large increase in the number of girls that are crossing the border. i was wondering if you could address why that is, what particular gender-based vulnerabilities we're seeing at play. and then as a two-part question, how the system is treating that in particular in trainings, at eoar when you're working with these young girls. thank you. >> talk about the training. >> yeah. i mean, i think we're seeing more girls. i mean, i think it's because of the safety issues in these countries and, you know, if you're a parent here -- and i also want to add, i mean, 55% of

the kids are being -- are coming and reunifying with parents which goes back to the whole issue around no cir. but if you're a parent here and you're worried about your daughter, you're going to -- you're going to bring her. and i think that we work with a number of girls who are victimized by the gangs. you know, rape is one of the things that they use against the girls. so i think that's the primary reason why we're seeing more girls. and i don't know if this has slowed down at all, but we have seen many more younger kids under the age of 13. and again, i think this is for the same reason. you have either parents in home country who are worried about their kids and want them to be safe or, you know, you've got family here that want their children to be safe. >> i think with respect to certain -- with the sensitivities to young girls in

particular, so it's important to note that while there are increases in the number of young girls, an increase in the number of tender-aged children, it's still -- you know, the majority we're still seeing is, like, older boys. >> didn't the age drop to 13, 14 compared to 16, 17? that's what the government reported back in late june. am i wrong about that? >> yeah, i think we're seeing more in this group. >> right. >> but i think overall, if you're looking at how many kids are currently processing through the immigration court system, you know, we're still very heavy on older boys. but to be, you know, but as we're responding to this group that's coming in and we're seeing them now, you know, we've always known, and there's always been a group of vulnerable young

girls in our courts. and so when we've had trainings on child-sensitive issues, we've looked into talking to the judges about some of the issues that might be not exclusive to young girls but more prone in terms of prostitution and the trafficking. and, you know, rape on the way here and how to handle that kind of thing. you know, and judges -- judges will, and i think, you know, maria gave some example of this to say, you know, look, it looks like something's going on here. you're not ready to talk about what's happened to you. and then they look -- you know, oh this goes back to, you know, a judge being able to look at the individual facts and circumstances of the case. and say, okay, this looks like a case where i might have to give, you know, this kid a continuance for a lot longer and talk to a legal service provider that might be there and say, look, is this something that you can, you know, try and get this kid some

help so that they can better articulate what's going on. but again, this may go towards looking at some of the gender-based asylum claims, looking at issues and that kind of thing. you know, with respect to the funding that we had for legal services and the justice americorps program, we focused on -- the program will serve children who are 15 and under. and in part, that's a response to the increased tender-age kids that we were seeing. because the funding will only go so far. we will only be able to serve so many kids. and so knowing that those kids are probably, you know, a little bit more vulnerable or less able to articulate themselves, that's where we concentrated our funding. >> thanks, barbara. maria, you want to add? >> i just wanted to add one thing. i think it's not only the judges, but i think there can be training for lawyers and anybody who works with kids. i mean, we have done this, asked

the judge to close the courtroom because it's somebody, either a girl who's got to testify about very specific and traumatizing information or a boy or, i mean, you can do that. and i think, though, there needs to be more training for anybody who's representing kids. and the other thing i'll say and it's something that i wish we could import from the child protection system. in child welfare we have child advocacy centers, and they're in most jurisdictions, if the child is abused in some way, the child goes to the child advocacy center. everybody sits in a room behind a -- they call it mirrored glass. somebody who knows how to intera child, and they interview the child. the police are behind the glass, the person representing the child. so the child only has to be interviewed once and that report is made available. it's something that i wish that we -- it would probably mean we need to get i.c.e. to work with the child advocacy centers around the country, to start doing that. it's so much better for kids. they have to tell their stories over and over and over and it's really difficult. >> we're running out of time. two of the three questioners who are former students, we'll allow each of them to pose a question. but do me a favor, michael, start with a question. i'll have each of you just pose your question, then we'll have the group answer them as a

whole, if that's okay with everybody. we'll start with michael. >> thank you. i'll try to be fast. i'm a member of the new york city bar association's immigration nationality committee, and right to due process and right to counsel. i would like to ask a question about the right to counsel. we framed that issue in terms of what we call the three cs, complexity, capacity and consequences. immigration law is extremely complex. maybe second only to tax law here in the united states. children simply don't have the capacity to represent themselves even though the immigration courts presume they do. the way we framed it is, when you bring the three factors together, the confluence of those three really is a perfect storm of due process violation. so my main question to you is, it's great that we see resources

being poured into this from cities, from states, and from the federal government. and that we're sort of rallying the pro bono crowd to the cause. but from my perspective, that's really a needs based approach rather than a rights based approach. so i'm wondering what we can do to vindicate what we see as an absolute right to counsel. >> thank you, michael. >> my name is jonathan ryan. we provide legal services to the unaccompanied children in san antonio. we spent the greater part of our summer working with the children at lackland air force base. between june 9 and july 28th, we met with over 2,100 children. we provided legal consultations and determined over 63% of them have strong cases for asylum or other forms of humanitarian relief. that is a number ratified by the unhdr findings and that we're receiving positive adjudications in those cases. motivations for these children to come, i've heard that, these are the most dangerous countries in the world that they're coming from, but really, they're just coming here because of the rumors spread by smugglers. that's like saying people are jumping out of burning buildings because firemen are down there

to catch them. these are refugees. regarding the -- i'd like to know how it's ensuring that the children are returned to their country, and whether you're taking any measures currently who are preventing children from exiting your country. i'd also like to know from the immigration court, if you could unpack some of the reasons and motivations for the prioritizations. i've been practicing in immigration courts for over ten years. what i'm seeing currently right now is a whole lot of nothing going on. the judges do not make many adjudications in the cases of the unaccompanied children. i'm seeing the judge talking to the little children, saying, that's a nice pink shirt you have, how are you doing, and resetting the cases. there aren't a lot of decisions being made right now in the san

antonio immigration court. we have active 42-a, long-term permanent residents waiting even longer waiting to get their cases heard. the children can wait, meanwhile the important cases seem to be pushed back. i'd like to know what was the reason for that. >> thanks for bringing that out. last, but not least. >> not a lot has been said about the root causes, not the topic of the panel, but a question that needs to be said, that a lot of kids are showing up vulnerable and terrorized and victimized as a direct result of the u.s. policies in the region. and the countries are client states from the united states, we've been intervening financial aid, and militarily in the last 100 years. and so my question is, it doesn't seem like anything is

going to change in regards to those policies anytime soon. so while the numbers of kids may go up and down, it doesn't seem like in the medium or long term this is going to change. our federal agencies, providers, people representing kids in court, are they thinking strategically for the long term in how to deal with these kids, how do we protect them and take care of them, you know, 10, 20, 30 years from now? it's hard to believe the flow is going to end. >> thank you, daniel. so i think the best way to proceed, given that we now have physically run out of time is just ask each of our panelists to say a few words. i would encourage you to address any of the particulars of the questions towards you, for example. why don't we start with you, ambassador, and we'll go down the route. >> first, if i didn't -- i

thought i said that i still believe that the traditional causes of migration, violence, looking for economic opportunities and family reunification were all the reasons for immigration. that didn't explain the specific surge we've seen in the past two years. that is where i think the roles of the smugglers comes. and this is not to diminish the importance of the other causes. which are, of course, the more structural causes of the problem. what are we doing in our country to try to prevent this? we are doing campaigns, media campaigns to educate people about the risks, and about the fallacy that they are going to receive green cards and

citizenship. so those perhaps do not explain by itself, that the increase in the numbers of kids coming. there are weather reasons, and cyclical reasons that i mentioned. but these campaigns are going on in the three countries, and are starting to have an impact. we are also working in strengthening the control of our borders, and going after the trafficking networks. in terms of -- as i mentioned also, these are not short-term measures. this resolution is not short-term. these are medium to long-term solutions. in security, for example, which is very complex, we started now doing certain concrete things, like implementing full-fledged community policing. this is an idea in which the police, instead of just being a force that will react to a 9/11 corridor, or whatever, the idea

is that they are members of the community, the police stay there. they are local actors, and become local actors. and this is by far been proving to be one of the best policies to confront violence and provide better citizen security. as i said, the long-term solution is economic development. this is something that cannot be done from one day to the other one. but that is where we are all aiming in the medium and short term to invest in the territory that are the ones that produce the more number of migrants. >> thank you, mr. ambassador. barbara? >> so, to the first issue about

the right versus needs based counsel. we're sued by folks, so i can't really speak to that one. got a couple of my lawyers in the back over there. so we'll leave that to the advocates to talk about. >> lawyers don't let you talk, right. >> no. beads of sweat on their faces. the next one with the rationale. the rationale for setting sort of that 21-day goal for the first master calendar, it was our agency's response to the president's directive to process the kids. i think with respect to, you know, there are cases, if you look at our adjudication time lines and how long it takes to get the kids through the immigration courts, there are courts if you you filed a notice for the kids, they wouldn't get a hearing for a year. the idea is you get the kids started in the process. so if what happens is that the judge says, look, do you want an

attorney, here's a list, if you want to start trying to find an attorney, this is what you need to do. or here are the types of relief that could be available to you. talk to me about what your circumstance is. and essentially, to start at th early in what is your story. what's going on to try to figure it out a year earlier then maybe it would have happened three years ago. i don't think there is an expectation that the child's cases would be over in 21 days or like i said before, there is a lot of aspects of relief for these kids that are out of hands of immigration judges. a lot of that is handled by the state courts. to the extent that the judges are a ringleader, that's not a great term, but they do oversee a lot of things going on with these kids. they aren't necessarily in

charge of the forms of rethat may be available to them. there is a benefit since starting the process and saying to the kids, let's figure out what's going on for you. this is one of the reasons that our judges have discretion to continue cases to allow the appropriate time for the a jude case of the case. i trust our judges. i think they know what they are doing. they know how to assess the facts and circumstances of the case to make sure that a child's rights are protected. >> thank you, barbara. maria? >> i will go back to the question about the right to counsel. obviously i don't think anybody in this room would not agree that children need counsel and there should be a right to counsel. i don't think you will find anyone here. i don't think so. i wasn't looking at you for a reason. i think we need a change in the

law. i think there some in the government that think we can provide counsel for everyone. i think it's a beginning that they are providing and paying for attorneys to provide direct representation. it's the beginning. it's not everything. we did get a provision in the senate bill last year that would have provided counsel for all children. that's a start. i think we will all have to start over on that. i guess in terms of root causes, i don't think on my side of the table we are doing enough. i think it's something we all have to talk about. i think it is a regional issue. i think we need to work with el salvador with a child at risk of going back to el salvador or has no choice to work with people in the government there. find a way to get the child back safely or connect him or her to

other and i think obamamented more money to deal with root causes and he didn't get that and it's a lot of money. we need more resources for everyone in the region and agencies doing the work and we need a best interest standard. >> i want to thank all of you for your questions and panelists for the discussion. please join me in giving them a round of applause. >> this weekend on c-span. author and president of arabs for israel. >> i have arrived late at night almost september 11th morning. i arrived in my home in los angeles. i oak up at 6:00 a.m. l.a. time

to see the second airplane hit in the twin tower live. i was traumatized. because that was when i knew this is terrorism. it's not one airplane accident. i ran to the phone and i called many people. i wanted them to comfort me. especially after i learned that mohamed atta, the leader of the terrorists was from cairo. the same city i had been from. i called around eight people and they all said the same thing. some of them don't know the other. they said how dare you say this is done by arabs. this is a jewish conspiracy. the jews did it. i hung up the phone and wept.

i cannot relate to my culture of origin anymore. this is a very hard feeling. when you can't relate to how the people you love and were brought up with for many, many years of your life, that they don't see the reality. >> her interview is sunday evening at 8:00 eastern on book tv. we are featuring new releases. the best selling author on religion and conflict. president george w. bush on his biography of his father and john mccain on unsung military heroes. on american history on c-span 3, all day live coverage of the world war i symposium from norfolk starting at 9:30 p.m. eastern. find the schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think

about the programs you are watching. call us. e-mail us at comments@c-span.org or send us a tweet at c-span #comments. follow us on twitter and like us on facebook. >> with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate, here on c-span 3, we complement the coverage by showing you the hearings and public affairs events. on weekends, c-span 3 is the home to american history tv with programs that tell our nation's story, including six unique series, the civil war's 150th anniversary visiting battlefields and key events. american artifacts touring museums to discover what they reveal about america's past. the best known history writers and lectures in history and the

new series, real america featuring arkifal government with the 30s through the 70s. c-span 3 created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable and satellite provider. follow us and like us. >> last month the carnegie endowment for peace held an all day forum examining the security of humanitarian reasons and isis is expanding in the mideast. they look at the threat posed by isis and the rise of extremists and the return to authoritarian rule following the arab awakening. >> good morning. i'm katherine wilkins from the

karn dee endowment and i want to welcome you to the all day conference. the topic is isis and the dynamics of the mideast. the islamic state less to public and international consciousness earlier this year with the horrible beheadings of western journalists. since that time, the public debate over the situation in the region has tended to be oversimplified and focused on isis and the efforts to degrade and destroy it. offers with an opportunity to step back and look deeper at the complex dynamics in the region and forces and conditions and the reactions and policies of the region. we have a group of that session

will begin at 3:00 and anyone ark tending will be asked on remain seated. finally we have c-span and a number of other news agencies filming the conference today. i ask you to be conscious as you move around. i will turn the microphone over. >> thank you very much and thank you for organizing this conference. it's such a timely time. the reason we were late and i'm sorry we are and we just stepped out of the meeting in which our president announced she would be stepping down after 18 years of service. and leading it to where it is

today, offering a unique global vision. they are going to succeed. i thought i would share the news with you. okay. our plans this morning will focus on iraq, syria, lebanon. while we have included the islamic state on the session, we want to go well beyond this state and consider the local root of the current fragmentation of violence in this country as well as the challenges by a rising influence of non-state action. including islamic groups such as isis and others. our focus will be on understanding the key factors with the security dynamics in these countries and the likely impact with the engagement in the region. finally we wilso