Our treatment of children at the border is shameful! Caged refugee children younger than 3 are being ordered to court without a lawyer being provided!
... immigrant children as young as 3 are being ordered into court for their own deportation proceedings, according to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C.
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“We were representing a 3-year-old in court recently who had been separated from the parents. And the child — in the middle of the hearing — started climbing up on the table,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law
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The children being detained under the new “zero tolerance” policy, though, are facing immigration proceedings without mom or dad by their side.
“The parent might be the only one who knows why they fled from the home country, and the child is in a disadvantageous position to defend themselves,” Toczylowski said.
... “It really highlighted the absurdity of what we’re doing with these kids.” ...
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/06/27/immigrant-toddlers-ordered-appear-court-alone/
Defendants in diapers? Immigrant toddlers ordered to appear in court alone
… “We were representing a 3-year-old in court recently who had been separated from the parents. And the child – in the middle of the hearing – started climbing up on the table,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles. “It really highlighted the absurdity of what we’rIt’s impossible to know how many children have begun deportation proceedings, Tzamaras said….
...“There have been reports of kids younger than 3 years old and others as old as 17.”e doing with these kids.” …
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/06/27/immigrant-children-deportation-court/739205002/
Immigrant Children Do Not Have the Right to an Attorney Unless They Can Pay, Rules Appeals Court
a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit issued a truly brutal decision, concluding that the Constitution did not require the government to provide a lawyer to a 15-year-old Honduran boy facing deportation.
It appears to be the first case ever to hold that children can represent themselves in court when important legal rights are at stake. That the ruling came in a deportation case involving asylum — where the stakes are incredibly high, the law notoriously complex, and the government pays a trained prosecutor to advocate the child’s deportation — makes the court’s decision even more extreme. The ruling is the latest, and most disappointing, chapter in our long-running effort to obtain fairness for children in immigration court.
Thanks to reddit user ikebu for posting this story on the politicalhumor reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/8uhfel/not_the_onion_immigrant_toddlers_ordered_to/ The comments there are worth reading, particularly this: “I read one of the court transcripts. Judge was formally asking a 3 year old questions, the three year old was responding by telling the judge about his toy. Be proud GOP, be proud. This child is obviously a criminal mastermind gang leader and expert and deflecting the judges' attention.”
Because of the reddit source, I checked the legitimacy of the Texas Tribune and it is legitimate; it has won a Peabody award, Edward R. Murrow awards, etc. It is worth checking out their coverage of the child immigrant scandal and other stories from the border.