Providing for the children if their parents are deported
Brenda Solkez of Wilkinsburg has no children of her own, but at a legal clinic a week ago Saturday at a church hall in Brookline, she agreed to take care of as many as seven of them if needed.
She agreed to be a guardian for children in three different families if any of their parents are detained by immigration agents, caring for them until immigration proceedings are completed and bringing them to Mexico to rejoin their parents if the latter are deported.
“It’s just really bad,” said Ms. Solkez, a U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, of the looming immigration crackdown. “I just cannot say ‘no’ to reunite the parents with their kids.”
Numerous parents living in the Pittsburgh area are now facing such prospects with the administration of President Donald Trump ramping up plans to expand the deportations of people for immigration violations, including those who may have lived and worked in the country for years.
“It should not be happening,” said Ms. Solkez. “Parents should not be separated from their kids. A kid should not be seeing their parents sign these kinds of powers to
someone they don’t really know. Parents should not be giving their most precious belongings away.”
Nor, she said, should young children have to learn the face and phone number of a guardian who might have to pick up them up from school if their parents are suddenly detained.
“How do you explain to children” a presidential policy that “criminalized their parents because they risked their lives to cross the border?”
In many cases, “we are talking about children who are American citizens,” said Cristian Minor, a bilingual attorney who was consulting with parents pro bono and drawing up documents for them at the clinic. “We are forcing them to leave the country with their parents even though they are going to a country they have never been in.”
The clinic was organized by Casa San Jose, a resource center for the Latino community, and hosted by St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, where the agency’s offices are located.
Mr. Minor helped about 10 sets of parents, mainly from Mexico or Central American countries, sign documents assigning guardianship and power of attorney to various legal residents of the United States to care for their children in the event they are detained for deportation.
In most cases, he said, the parents would want to have the children join them in their home country if they are deported.
But he said many of the parents fled in the first place for fear for their safety because of such factors as high crime. That leaves them with an excruciating choice if they get deported: Bring their children back to a dangerous situation or have them grow up without their parents.
“It is very sad in these cases,” he said. “It’s like, ‘what should I do? Should I live without my kids all my life, or bring my kids and potentially end up in poverty,’ which would be the least of their worries,” he said. The greater worries would be being injured or killed, he said.
Even after assigning guardianship, he said, a family-court judge could review the documents and assign a foster-care provider or another guardian, he said.
As with all custody cases, the judge’s prime criterion is the best interests of the child.
But these documents make a clear statement of the parents’ wishes.
“What we are doing is trying to minimize the risk,” said Mr. Minor. “You never know how the courts will react or how authorities will accept those documents.”
The Trump administration plans to hire thousands of additional immigration and border-control agents and to greatly increase efforts to deport many of the millions of those who entered the country illegally.
Whereas the administration of President Barack Obama prioritized the deportation of serious criminals and security risks, Mr. Trump’s policy would target those convicted of or charged with minor crimes or suspected of being a risk. Anxieties abound among i mmigrants who fear being swept up in a raid even if they aren’t the intended target and have not violated any laws since entering the United States.
Ms. Solkez said that while these policies are more severe, she said they build on decades of harsh immigration policy by both Democratic and Republican administrations.
“It’s almost impossible to come here legally when you are running away from poverty and violence and internal wars,” she said.
“You can sense the fear in the community, that people don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Mr. Minor. “Hopefully we don’t have to use any of the documents and the families can stay together,” he said.