Sergio Rodriguez Nicole Cardoza Sergio Rodriguez Nicole Cardoza

Support unaccompanied minors.

One category of immigrants that is often overlooked in the larger conversation about immigration is unaccompanied minors. The term refers to youth who are under eighteen years old, undocumented, and have no parents or legal guardians in the United States (National Immigrant Justice Center). They also are the students who don’t get to join the high school soccer team because they have to work a full-time job. They are the hard workers who have to choose between earning a diploma and paying their rent. Every day, they are faced with making decisions about whether to go to school and reach their academic potential or go to work to provide for themselves and their families back in their home countries.

Happy Monday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. It's a new month and I'm excited for the possibilities it holds. Today, Sergio joins us with his personal narrative, urging us all to do more to support unaccompanied minors in our communities.

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Nicole

TAKE ACTION

  • Volunteer at your local high school to mentor unaccompanied minors through high school and into college.

  • Donate to organizations that provide free legal assistance to unaccompanied minors like Kids in Need of Defense.

  • Write letters to your local representatives to provide more funding and resources at majority Latino high schools.

GET EDUCATED

By Sergio Rodriguez (he/him/el)

One category of immigrants that is often overlooked in the larger conversation about immigration is unaccompanied minors. The term refers to youth who are under eighteen years old, undocumented, and have no parents or legal guardians in the United States (National Immigrant Justice Center). They also are the students who don’t get to join the high school soccer team because they have to work a full-time job. They are the hard workers who have to choose between earning a diploma and paying their rent. Every day, they are faced with making decisions about whether to go to school and reach their academic potential or go to work to provide for themselves and their families back in their home countries. 

Most unaccompanied minors are from Central America, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In 2018, 49,100 unaccompanied minors arrived in the United States. In May 2019,  11,500 more crossed the U.S.-Mexico border (Migration Policy Institute). Most of them leave their home countries to escape political violence, gang violence, and extreme poverty. Because of U.S.-driven instability in Central America, it can be hard to disentangle one of these reasons from another. For me, it was a mixture of all three. 

I came to the United States from El Salvador at the age of seventeen. The decision to leave my home country was incredibly difficult and complex. In El Salvador, my parents supported five children on poverty-level wages. When I was five, I spent early morning hours under that never-ending blue sky farming volcanic soil with my dad for five dollars a day. That money went right to my mom to try and satisfy our always hungry stomachs. 

As I got older, it became more and more difficult for my parents to support us all.  In El Salvador, due to a compounding mix of violence, unemployment, and job scarcity, it is increasingly difficult for young people to stay motivated to get through school and into the workforce (OECD). I knew that if I wanted a better future for myself, one where I could realize my full potential and meet my most basic needs, I would have to leave my country.

I decided to come to the United States alone. I left with nothing more than my wallet, three shirts, a pair of jeans, a pair of shoes, and a water bottle. The wallet contained my high school ID card, my passport, letters from friends and family, and memories; no money. 

I traveled through Guatemala with a small group of people. We hitched rides and took buses to get to Mexico. We crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and immediately got arrested and put into a youth detention center. After being released and connecting with my long-distant aunt, I got my first job. My first paycheck was a hundred dollars. I had never had so much money in my entire life; I was excited. Then the bills started piling up. 

To pursue my right to stay in this country, I found and paid for a lawyer. Because I am an unaccompanied minor, I had no parental support. My aunt was living her own life, and while I was able to rent a bedroom from her, that was the extent of our relationship. I paid for my legal fees, rent, food, and sent money back to feed my family by working more than fifty hours a week at a restaurant all through high school. This often meant sacrificing things for myself. I ate a lot of fruit because it was cheaper than buying meat, bread, or beans. I spent my first Boston winter sloshing through snow and ice each night after my shift ended at midnight without a winter coat or boots shivering the whole way home.

My high school grades were far from exemplary. I struggled to pay attention in class because I was always tired, my stomach always rumbling, my thoughts easily drifting to the next impending crisis. It would have been so easy to drop out, to disappear into the background. If you are undocumented, you probably have an immigration story just as harrowing and difficult as mine. Some of it I talk about, more of it, I don’t.

Approximately 125,000 undocumented immigrant students like myself reach high school graduation age each year. However, only ninety-eight thousand actually graduate. The other twenty-seven thousand students exit early from high school and, in my experience, these students are most likely unaccompanied (Migration Policy Institute). (Accurate data about unaccompanied minors is nearly impossible to come by because of our often under-the-radar existence.) 

Without the support of mentors, I would be one of those twenty-seven thousand young people who leave high school only to drift into the shadows and operate on the edge of legality to try and chase my dreams. Unaccompanied minors are kids. They deserve everything any child deserves, especially a full-time education where they are not pressured to choose between school and survival. 

An unaccompanied student in high school has the same responsibilities as an adult except that the adult doesn’t have to attend school while working full time, paying  bills, buying food and clothes, and paying for legal representation. Immigration court is the only court system in the United States where you are not guaranteed a lawyer, even as a minor. Maybe you remember hearing those horror stories about kids going to court alone (The Atlantic). It’s all true; we all do. Being unaccompanied is a full-time adult and adolescent existence that constantly forces children to make hard, grown-up decisions.

We need to overhaul our system to support unaccompanied minors both in the legal system and in the community. We need to reform our immigration court structure to guarantee all defendants a lawyer. We need mental health support in schools, especially bilingual and bicultural counselors who can help students process the trauma of independent migration. We need a social safety net that includes unaccompanied minors to ensure they have safe housing, food, and clothes whether or not they have an income. Finally, we need adults who support us—people who can mentor, tutor, and believe in our capabilities—so that we get the chance to be kids before becoming adults.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Unaccompanied minors are children seeking education, safety, and a future in the U.S.

  • Unaccompanied minors are not guaranteed legal representation and have to find lawyers and pay legal fees

  • Unaccompanied minors are often left out of immigration conversations and deserve the same opportunities and paths toward citizenship as DACA and DREAMers

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Jami Nakamura Lin Nicole Cardoza Jami Nakamura Lin Nicole Cardoza

Protect undocumented Americans.

Happy Monday!

We are 29 days from the election, and it's critical to remember how many voices deserve to be heard at the polls. Today, Jami calls us to action to protect undocumented immigrants here in America (and around the world), and provide sanctuary no matter where we live.

As always, you can support the newsletter by giving one-time on PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza), or subscribe monthly on Patreon. Thank you for your support.

Nicole 

TAKE ACTION

  • Protect your community and know your rights. Check out United We Dream’s (@unitedwedream) Deportation Defense toolkits for undocumented immigrants and allies.

  • If you witness an ICE raid or spot them in your community, call the MigraWatch Hotline at 1-844-363-1423. This will spread the word and keep others safe.

  • RAICES’s (@raicestexas) Take Action list provides many ways you can support—from tweets to petitions to donations to starting conversations with your family.

  • Donate to your local immigrant mutual aid network or to organizations like UndocuBlack

GET EDUCATED

By Jami Nakamura Lin (she/her)

As we reach the last weeks of the presidential race, the Trump administration, hoping to persuade voters with a strong “law and order” message, is preparing immigration raids in sanctuary cities, according to the Washington Post. On September 24th, Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) officials announced that they arrested over 500 people within a few days (LA Times). Across the country, undocumented immigrants and activists in the targeted cities, including Philadelphia, are getting their communities ready (Philadelphia Inquirer). In the 2018 fiscal year (the most recent year combined data is available), ICE and Border Patrol deported over 337,287 undocumented immigrants from the interior United States (Pew Research Center). This number is separate from people apprehended while attempting to cross the border; these were people who had built lives here. 

 

For those of us who are documented citizens, we can’t understand the pervasive fear, stress, and anxiety that goes along with being undocumented. In a New York Times podcast, an undocumented mother from Nicaragua explains to the host: “Sometimes I cry… you’re like, oh, my God, what I did bad? Just staying in a country where I want to feel safe? I don’t know. I don’t know. Right now, I’m in my car talking to you, and I know, when I get through that door, I have to turn off that light and stay in my room. Why?” (NYTimes The Daily)

 

The woman goes on to describe the way she and her family live when there are rumors of immigration crackdowns: never opening the door, only using a small light, parking in a neighbor’s space instead of their own. Even if the threat never materializes, fear is a powerful tool, one that this administration wields like a hammer to keep undocumented Americans underground, unable to access basic needs like health care during the pandemic (NYTimes). While living in a sanctuary city can be safer for undocumented Americans, due to local protections, it can never be—or feel— truly safe. 

 

The term sanctuary city, in fact, has no specific legal or government-defined meaning.  “Lots of people use the unofficial term “sanctuary city” to refer to local jurisdictions (not just cities but counties and sometimes states) that don’t fully cooperate with federal efforts to find and deport unauthorized immigrants,” explains Dara Lind, in a useful primer on the history and context of sanctuary cities at Vox. “If that sounds vague, that’s because it is, and it gets at the tension between federal policy and local law enforcement generally used to carry out those laws.” 

 

Most of us have a limited view of undocumented Americans—often because of the narrow, biased single narrative that our government and media push: Mexico, border crossings, DACA.  In the new book The Undocumented Americans, author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (the first undocumented student to graduate from provides a nuanced, deeper context, pushing back on the limited narratives we usually see. “This book is for everybody who wants to step away from the buzzwords in immigration, the talking heads, the kids in graduation caps and gowns, and read about the people underground,” she writes in her introduction. “Not heroes. Randoms. People. Characters.” 

 

As she says, undocumented Americans are not a monolithic block. An estimated 619,000 Black undocumented immigrants are residing in the United States (Pew Research Center). They are more likely than non-Black undocumented immigrants to be deported. “Although Black immigrants comprise just 5.4% of the unauthorized population in the United States, they made up a striking 10.6% of all immigrants in removal proceedings between 2003 and 2015,” reports the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. For more information, read interviews with undocumented Black Americans at ThinkProgress and the Atlantic. 

 

If you or your family are (or have ever been) undocumented and want to share your experiences, feel free to share your experience at submissions@antiracismdaily.org; we will not share identifying details.

 

We can help provide sanctuary no matter where we live. United We Dream (the largest immigrant youth-led organization) states: “In a sanctuary… members of that community are united and prepared to protect immigrants from deportation forces… are united against police brutality...  [Sanctuary spaces] are places in which the dignity and integrity of every individual as a human being is respected and preserved” (UWD Here to Stay Toolkit). We need to work to ensure that our actions are guided by such principles. 

 

Part of that is becoming more intentional in thinking about how we privilege citizenship, and what barriers our communities, often unintentionally, present for undocumented people. Some of that means expanding our definitions: in one case, Black students discovered that they weren’t eligible for the few college scholarships open to undocumented students because they weren’t Latinx (The Atlantic). Often, it means asking ourselves how welcoming our spaces are for undocumented people. I used to work for a public library—an institution that prides itself as being for everyone— but at libraries like mine, you need identification, a discriminatory policy that prevents many undocumented people from receiving our services (Time). Undocumented Americans pay billions of dollars in local, state, and federal taxes per year (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy), but they are not able to receive many of the benefits they’re paying for.  


Lastly: remember that the dehumanization of undocumented Americans didn’t start—and won’t end—with Trump. ICE, deportations, and border camps existed under the Obama, Bush, and Clinton administrations as well (NYTimes). Our immigration policies have been discriminatory since their implementation. We can fight for better policies, but we need to always remember that communities and people can provide sanctuary in ways that laws cannot.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • In the 2018 fiscal year, 337,287 undocumented immigrants were deported from the United States (Pew Research Center).

  • Black undocumented immigrants are more likely than other undocumented immigrants to be deported (Black Alliance for Just Immigration).

  • Undocumented Americans pay billions of dollars in local, state, and federal taxes per year (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy).

  • The dehumanization of undocumented Americans didn’t start—and won’t end—with Trump. We need to support them no matter who is president.

RELATED ISSUES

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

Read More