US halt of refugee program blocks kids

Thousands of Central American children might have lost their one chance at a safe escape from the violence in their home countries after the federal government ended another refugee and immigrant program.

Officials announced on Nov. 8 that In-Country Refugee/Parole Processing for Minors in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala,

commonly known as the Central American Minors program, would stop accepting applicants the next day.

The program allowed children of legal U.S. residents to legally come to the country and join their family members, often escaping dangerous or lifethreatening situations.

All Central American Minors cases come through refugee-resettlement agencies, including two local agencies: US Together and Community Refugee and Immigration Services.

Agencies had less than 48 hours to submit applications. At US Together, Rachel Burch scrambled to finish the two cases she had been working on, a process that often can take months because it includes compiling several documents.

The agency helped more than 50 parents apply through the program in 2015 and 2016, said Burch, who was the volunteer and donations coordinator at US Together until she left this month. The majority were from El Salvador, although all three nations have a long history of violence, she said. El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala consistently rank among the most-violent countries in the world, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent research group.

Community Refugee and Immigration Services filed applications on behalf of 22 parents in the United States for 36 children. All but two were Salvadorans, and only three were granted refugee status and resettled in America, said Executive Director Angie Plummer.

“Children deserve a safe pathway to protection when facing persecution and violence,” Plummer said in an email. “By canceling this program, the U.S. is reneging on its promise to help.”

“It is a phase-down in a very short period of time. The program was (created) out of Americans’ values that children should live free of fear for their safety and security, free from persecution,” Plummer said. “By dismantling the program, we are turning our backs on vulnerable children and leaving them to resort to dangerous migration journeys.”

The U.S. State Department said the Resettlement Support Centers in each of the countries will still screen applicants, but only until Jan. 31. Any applicants not screened will get a notice with other instructions, according to the website of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

A spokeswoman said the State Department is “not able to predict how many children and families will be affected by the end of the program because the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) interview schedule has not been finalized.”

Community Refugee and Immigration Services’ parent organization, Church World Service, estimated that 7,000 children could be displaced after the program ends, spokeswoman Wardah Khalid said in an email.

Central American Minors was created under President Barack Obama in December 2014 after several hundred minors from the three countries entered the United States illegally. Approximately 3,000 people 21 or younger have been allowed into the country legally through the program.

The U.N. Refugee Agency has repeatedly called for countries to help people fleeing violence in Central America, saying in April 2016 that the violence “has surged to levels not seen since the region was wracked by armed conflicts in the 1980s.”

The State Department said the decision to end the program was made as part of an overall review of the U.S. Refugee Admissions program.

The same review capped refugee admissions for this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, at 45,000. That is less than half of Obama’s allocation of 110,000 for both the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years; President Donald Trump cut the 2017 allocation to 50,000.

There are other ways to bring family members into the U.S., but many of them might not be readily available to the people living in the three Central American countries, Burch said. Some programs require that family members be registered as refugees in a camp, and there might not be camps in a country. Others require U.S. residents to become citizens before bringing in family members, or they have application fees of thousands of dollars.

When Burch heard that the Central America program would end, she said she was sad but not surprised.

“We’ve just had so much bad news,” she said. “Every program we think is safe and just and doing good isn’t safe.”