The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights

Children's Rights Program -The Organization is appointed Child Advocate by the Department of Health & Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The role of the Child Advocate is to advocate for the best interests of individual children and ensure that all decisions on behalf of an immigrant child take into consideration the child's best interests. The children served by the Organization are those considered most vulnerable, for example, children who have been abused, infants who are the subject of international custoday battles, children who have developmental disabilities, young girls who want to live with their traffickers, those who have lost their parents to violence, and more.While in ORR custody, these children are separated from their parents. They need an adult to advocate for their best interests, to advocate that they be reunified with their parents, to ensure they have legal representation, to advocate for their well-being, to ensure decision makers, including ORR, immigration judges, asylum officers and enforcement officials consider their best interests. After they are released, children are still in deportation proceedings and it is critical that the same decision makers receive fact-based information about their best interests from independent child advocates.Under our model, the Organization recruits and trains bilingual volunteers, such as teachers, retired attorneys, students, and other community members, to serve as child advocates. The volunteers meet with the children and learn their stories which often hold the key to figuring out whether they are eligible for protection. With this information, the Organization's attorneys and social workers then advocate on behalf of the children, submitting best interests recommendations to ORR, immigration judges, asylum officers, enforcement officials, shelter providers and lawyers for the children. The best interests reports detail the issues at stake and make specific recommendations about the child's safety and well-being. The Organization serves a key role in ensuring the safety and well-being of the most vulnerable unaccompanied children, both while they are in custody and after they are released.International Home Studies: Some children wish to return to their home countries, while others face removal against their wishes. In cases where children face repatriation, the Organization seeks to determine whether the child can be safely repatriated, as required by the Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. In cases where there are concerns about a child's safety upon repatriation, the Organization will contract with a social worker, or a non-governmental organization, in the child's home country, to visit the child's home and conduct a home study to determine whether it would be safe for the child to return. The Organization uses these home studies for the Best Interests recommendations, which are then submitted to the federal immigration authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security, immigration judges and the Asylum Office.Through this work, the Organization works to ensure the safety and well-being of individual children who either choose to or are forced to repatriate. In addition, the Organization seeks reform more broadly in the immigration system by making the case that decision-makers should always request evidence of whether a child has a safe home to return to before ordering a child deported. These home studies cost approximately $1,000 per study and the Organization raises private funds for this work.

Policy Advocacy Work - The Organizations' goal is to change the immigration system so that children in immigration proceedings are recognized as children, and best interests is made a part of the decision making process.The Organization conducts policy advocacy at the national level - with Congress and federal agencies - to incorporate the best interests of the child standard into practice, policy and immigration law.