Influx of students a strain
School, health officials struggle to keep up with entering migrant children
NORWALK — Health care providers are backlogged with students needing physicals and immunizations before entering the city’s public schools.
At City Hall, the Health Department has increased the hours of its physician assistant to accommodate the more than 80 students they’ve seen for physicals since around the start of this school year. According to the city’s health educator, Theresa Argondezzi, there were roughly 10 at this time last year.
“We’ve been allocating some of our existing resources, diverting folks and time to this problem to make sure we’re able to get as many kids processed and get their physicals in,” Argondezzi said.
The impact has been similar at Norwalk Community Health Center, where they’ve seen an unprecedented number of students, pri
marily from Central America, entering the district since June.
“Absolutely, it feels like we have an increase from last year,” said Jill Goldberg, director of pediatrics at Norwalk Community Health Center. “We’re doing extra new patient physicals to accommodate them.”
Superintendent of Schools Steven J. Adamowski announced in September the district could see as many as 350 new immigrant students enroll this year. He said many of them are coming from Nicaragua and Honduras, and some have been released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention camps.
The number is an estimate and will not be finalized until later this month, when the district will release official enrollment numbers as of Oct. 1. But if trends hold, the total number of English Language Learners in the district — currently at 1,991 — could well exceed 2,000 once the count is complete.
“We’re trying to figure out, what’s this gonna cost us?” Board of Education Chairman Mike Barbis said. “We probably don’t have enough resources.”
According to state estimates, it costs about 30 percent more to educate an ELL student than an Englishspeaking student. In addition, Barbis said many newcomers are Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education, whose schooling may have been interrupted for any variety of reasons, including civil war, migration, or lack of resources. In some cases, the children have experienced some form of trauma.
“This is not a layup, this is not just accepting some kids that have moved from North Dakota,” Barbis said. “It’s not a simple situation — there are a lot of moving
pieces.”
School administrators have begun having conversations with city officials, including Mayor Harry Rilling, who has reached out to Norwalk’s federal delegation requesting aid to offset the strain on the city.
“We know most of these students arrived in Norwalk after being released from federal detention centers,” Rilling said Friday. “They have experienced trauma and violence, and require additional social services . ... The fact is these students are here as a direct result of decades of failed policies that have not addressed immigration and asylum at the southern border. Instead, the federal government has shifted the responsibility directly onto communities like Norwalk.”
According to Keighly Rector, survivor services staff attorney and pro bono coordinator at the Bridgeportbased Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants, the organization has been consistently serving immigrants from Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — since 2013.
“In general, lots of children are coming from Central America, due mostly to violence, gang activity, or abandonment, either by a parent or a caretaker,” Rector said. “So they’re coming to reunify with family here.”
The pattern of immigration from the Northern Triangle, and other Central American countries, holds nationally. In Connecticut, Fairfield County in recent years has seen by far the highest number of immigrants, which can, in part, be measured by the number of immigration court cases filed in the area.
According to data compiled by Syracuse’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, there have been 34 immigration cases filed in Norwalk in the past 90 days. Countywide during the same time period, 178 were filed. In total, there are 3,655 pending immigration cases in Fairfield County, more than double the amount in New Haven County, which has the secondhighest number.
Unaccompanied minors — children who arrive in America with their parents or family members, who are detained by ICE — can be held for no more than 20 days, according to a 1997 California court ruling. The ruling is known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, which has since set the national standard for the detention and release of children.
The agreement was recently challenged by President Donald Trump. Abolishing it would have allowed the indefinite detention of migrant children, but a California court ruled last month to uphold the agreement.
Upon release, Rector said, children are ideally sent to family members already settled in the country. If family arrangements cannot be made, children may end up in the care of the government, in a foster home or facility operated by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. The federal office contracts with local organizations, like CIRI, which are charged with ensuring a child is released into a safe and healthy living situation as immigration proceedings, which can take years, progress.
“There is a process that the ORR goes through in investigating that caretaker and determining that caretaker is appropriate — that there’s a bed, food, clothing — and that this is a safe place for them to release a child,” Rector said.
Despite those efforts, issues of housing and educational insecurity at times persist. In certain situations, migrant children who have been resettled may be forced to work inappropriate jobs and hours. Or, they may find themselves in unstable or unsafe housing.
“It’s most heartbreaking when the most atrisk of the atrisk are taken advantage of,” Rector said.
According to Rilling, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, DConn., proposed a potential increase in the district’s federal Title I funding, which provides assistance to districts with a high amount of lowincome families. Himes did not respond to a request for comment.
“Our country was founded on the backs of immigrants,” Rilling said. “Our immigrant community is strong and vibrant and an essential part of our city. Norwalk is a welcoming community and we cannot let our new neighbors down. We will meet the needs of these students and their families because that is who we are as a country, state, and city.”
“We know most of these students arrived in Norwalk after being released from federal detention centers. They have experienced trauma and violence, and require additional social services . ... The fact is these students are here as a direct result of decades of failed policies that have not addressed immigration and asylum at the southern border.”
Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling