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Courts bracing for influx of youth immigrant cases

SAN ANTONIO – One after another, the children from Central America sat at the defendant’s table in U.S. Immigration Court in this city and faced routine questions from Judge Anibal Martinez.

Do you know the charges against you? Do you have representation? Do you understand that if you don’t show up to your next hearing, you could be deported?

The children – mostly teenagers from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – listened to simultaneous Spanish translations through headphones and nodded in agreement. On this day, most were accompanied by attorneys or legal representatives, many of them working pro bono.

The judge smiled at the children and opened each line of questioning with a cordial greeting: “Thank you for your patience this morning.” In the two rows of the visitors galley, more children: three teenage boys dressed in shirt and tie or jeans and Nike high-top sneakers, a young woman staring down at her shoes, an older woman corralling two grade-school sons. Some had attorneys; others were there alone. All were from Central America.

Even with legal backing, the procedure was daunting for some of the teens.

“No way I could do this alone,” said Jose Enrique, 17, who left El Salvador last fall after members of the MS-13 street gang threatened to kill him. He requested that his last name not be published in case he’s deported and is sought out by the gangs. The teen was accompanied by a pro bono attorney in court Wednesday.

“I can’t go back,” he said. “If I go back, they kill me.”

Suite 300 in Immigration Court here, where Martinez hears juvenile cases every Wednesday, is on the front lines of the crisis of immigrant children illegally crossing the Southwest border. That rush of unaccompanied minors – expected to reach more than 90,000 this fiscal year – has overwhelmed federal holding facilities and Border Patrol units.

It also threatens to severely strain an immigration court system already buckling under unprecedented volume. As of the end of June, the 59 immigration courts across the United States, run by 243 judges, had a record backlog of 375,503 pending cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research group at Syracuse University.

Wait times for hearings are averaging about a year-and-a-half, some much longer. The crush of immigrant youths could further strain that workload.

The White House has asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funding, which includes $45 million for new judges plus funding for legal aid for children and has signaled it would like to see deportations stepped up. Republican lawmakers have balked at the proposal. They want to make it easier to send the youths back.

The Justice Department has announced plans to dispatch judges to the border to speed up proceedings.

“We have an obligation to provide humanitarian care for children and adults with children who are apprehended on our borders, but we also must do whatever we can to stem the tide of this dangerous migration pattern,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole said.

© 2014 USA TODAY. All rights reserved.

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