A Dozen Immigrant Children Choose Deportation to See Parents Again

Of the approximately 350 children separated from their parents who are being held in centers and foster families in New York, about a dozen have voluntary been deported to their home country in order to reunite with their parents, according to Mario Russell, director of Catholic Charities New York's Immigrant & Refugee Services Division.

Attorneys at Catholic Charities have met with all the children currently being held in New York, and have to weigh tough options about what the children want, what their parents want, and how best to reconcile the two desires in a complicated and congested court system. 

“Some kids who can communicate say I want now to be with mom and connection is made over the phone and everyone agrees that mom will go back and child will go back,” Russell explained.

Though choosing to be deported voluntarily is often the quickest way to reunify families, it doesn’t make the decision a simple one.

“In some instances," he said, "the child will say [to us], 'I’m just going to wait and see what Mom decides,' and Mom — in federal custody in the South — may be struggling with this decision, maybe she fled gang violence or abuse in the home, and she’s having to decide, ‘Do I stay here in detention separated from [my] child for how long? Two months? A year? Two years?’ It’s a long process.”

Russell added that very rarely an older child, in their teens, will express that they don’t want to go back regardless of what the parent chooses, and in that case Catholic Charities helps the child with their legal case. “We will respect the wish and intent of every child to the extent that they can verbalize it and to the extent that they have that agency,” Russell said.

Russell said that all of the children in New York had made contact with their parents except for one or two who are too young to talk on the phone.