Crack Dealers or Victimized Children?
The recent series of S.F. Chronicle articles concerning a group of immigrant youth apprehended for drug sales in San Francisco is misguided and misdirected. Without any consideration of the desperate circumstances of their lives, the article demonize these immigrants and castigate the Juvenile Probation Department for returning these children to their families. Many of the youth disparagingly cast as common criminals, often are forced to flee their home countries in dire straits and arrive alone in a country in which they are marginalized, exploited and coerced into an underground world of drug dealing. With apparent zeal to paint these children in as unfavorable a light as possible, the articles fail to address the disturbing reality that many of these children are actually trafficked into the United States and forced to deal drugs to pay off their debt, much like the women and children forced into prostitution by sex traffickers.
The vast majority of unaccompanied youth from Central America are desperate to escape the crushing poverty and violence in their home countries. In the case of Honduras, the average annual income is $4,100, there is a 27% unemployment rate, and 50% of the population lives in desperate poverty. Official report from Amnesty International in 2008, indicate that at least 500 women and children were killed without anyone brought to justice for the crimes. These children are leaving their home countries with the hope that America offers a fresh start, or at least a chance to send some money home to put food on the table. Upon their arrival in San Francisco, the stark reality of an undocumented immigrant becomes evident and they are forced into jobs in the shadows of society.
The article miss the point when they blame San Francisco’s Sanctuary Ordinance as the rationale for not routinely turning these children over to Immigration & Customs Enforcement officials. Perhaps coaxed by US Attorney Joseph Russoniello — who similarly opposed churches and synagogues offering sanctuary to Salvadorans and Guatemalans fleeing death squads in the 1980’s — the article blaming the city’s ordinance are aimed at the wrong target. Neither the spirit nor the letter of the ordinance , which some of us drafted back in 1989, could have produced the current circumstance.
In point of face, these children are under the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Court, which is part of the Unified Family Court, not the criminal court. State law protects the confidentiality of the juvenile court proceedings and records. Moreover, contrary to the repeated assertions, federal immigration law does not require that San Francisco turn over information regarding the immigration status of juvenile detainees who appear to be in the country illegally. The Juvenile Court and Probation Department are legally mandated to consider the needs of each minor on a case by case basis and provide a plan that will protect the child’s best interest, which may include placement in foster care, a group home, release to local family or return to family out of the country. These laws apply to all children under Juvenile Court jurisdiction, regardless of immigration status.
The unhappy reality is that there are undocumented, unaccompanied children in our community who resort to drug sales or other unsafe, illegal activities in order to survive and to support their families. The preferred solution — to detain them in locked immigration facilities for as long as it takes to formally deport them — is one that naively assumes this will prevent them from returning to this country. We reject this inhumane solution for its failure to recognize and address the real crime: poverty, violence and exploitation.
Respectfully Submitted,
San Francisco Immigrant Legal & Education Network, Legal Services for Children, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Tags: drugs, minors, response, San Francisco Chronicle, unaccompanied, undocumented
