Dear Inequality Insights reader,
If state legislators don’t act fast, a program that protects children who immigrate to California by themselves will soon run out of funds. Without an attorney to represent them in immigration court, the vast majority of children are ordered removed. One minor helped by the project told us he was unable to obtain legal representation on his own: “I tried to call and call and call many lawyers. Some of them never answered me, and others said they were already too busy. In the end, no one was able to help me,” said A.L., who asked us not to use his full name because he feared for his safety and that of his family in Honduras.
A one-time, $15.3 million allocation in 2022 funded the Children’s Holistic Immigration Representation Project (CHIRP), which helped A.L. avoid deportation back to the country he fled. In addition to legal representation, the program provides social workers who help children find mental health services, enroll in school and secure work permits.
Between October 2017 and March 31, 2021, 90% of minors without legal representation in immigration court were ordered removed from the country by federal authorities, according to data provided in a 2021 Congressional Research Service report.
The $298 billion state budget passed in June does not include more funding for CHIRP, though the Legislature is “exploring possible solutions” to ensure the project’s survival, according to the advocacy director of Immigrant Defense Advocates. The need for the program may soon become more pressing. In early June, President Joe Biden issued an executive order restricting asylum processing at the U.S.-Mexico border. Because the order exempts unaccompanied minors, immigration advocates say that parents may make the difficult decision to send their children across the border alone.
The governor’s office said Wednesday the state’s final budget maintains about $75 million in ongoing funding for immigration-related legal services, which includes other money for legal services to represent unaccompanied minors. State legislators have until their session ends Aug. 31 to renew funding specifically for the CHIRP project. Read more in my latest story.
DON’T MISS
- Cost of poverty. Inflation, coupled with a sluggish rise in workers’ wages, is hitting poor families hard, according to a post on the Brookings Institute website. The Washington D.C.-based research organization found more than a third of all families and more than one-half of families of color are not making enough to cover their basic necessities.
- Rent control? In the midst of an affordable housing crisis, dozens of rent-controlled buildings in Los Angeles are listed on short-term rental websites. A 2018 city statute was supposed to prevent this, but ProPublica reports that L.A. officials are struggling to enforce it.
- Health inspections. California lawmakers are considering changing the law to allow county health officers to conduct inspections in federal detention centers operated by private companies, including all six federal immigration centers in California. California Healthline reported contaminated water, moldy food, and air ducts spewing black dust have been documented within the facilities.
- Paid leave. Lower-income workers and Asian, Black and Hispanic employees do not have equal access to the state’s paid parental leave benefit, which allows 60-70% of wages for up to eight weeks, research shows. Stanford health policy professor Maya Rossin-Slater told Axios, “Just because there’s a policy that exists at the state level doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody who lives in that state is going to equally access it.”
- Economic boon. Asylum seekers and migrants who have come to California since 2021 are lifting the state’s economy by filling otherwise vacant jobs, the Los Angeles Times reported. There are short-term public tax costs associated with the new arrivals for education and health services, but those do not outweigh the increases in revenues from the millions more people working, paying taxes, and buying goods, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
- Student loan debt. It’s not just a young person’s problem anymore. As of August 2022, six percent of older adults – about 7.2 million Americans – carry student loan debt, according to new research from the Urban Institute. Among the borrowers, 8% overall are delinquent on their loans but that rate shoots up to 15% in minority communities.
- Asylum ban. Human Rights First, Hope Border Institute, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Kino Border Initiative and Refugees International filed an amicus brief this week challenging the Biden administration’s election-year ban on asylum for people who try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in between ports of entry. Before, border officials were required to ask migrants if they feared deportation, but now asylum seekers must “manifest” or volunteer their fear of returning to their country. Human rights groups say even when people tell agents they fear return, they are being removed anyway. In one case, according to the legal filing, agents removed a Mexican mother and her eight-year-old child who had nearly been kidnapped in Veracruz, telling them, “The border has closed. Don’t come back.
Thanks for following our work on the California Divide team. While you’re here, please tell us what kinds of stories you’d love to read. Email us at inequalityinsights@calmatters.org.
Thanks for reading,
Wendy and the California Divide Team