Egkolfopoulou, M. (2018, August 27). The thousands of children who go to immigration court alone. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/children-immigration-court/567490/%C2%A0

Summary

The article “The thousands of children who go to immigration court alone” by Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou, talks about the struggles that unaccompanied minors who don’t have lawyers to help represent them in court, are more likely to get deported than those who do get represented. The author includes many statistics that support her claim that the children living in the county of Fresno are facing more challenges than the unaccompanied children living in other places like San Francisco. Some of those challenges being how far the immigration courts are from Fresno, and how hard it is to obtain free legal counsel.This makes it difficult for them to be able to get an attorney when they have no money to pay for one. The author also highlights the stories of unaccompanied children that were feeling worried due to not being able to find a lawyer fast enough to help represent them in court since they didn’t know how to do this themselves. A statistic she mentioned was, “More than 80 percent of children who showed up to court unrepresented were deported. For children who appeared in court with legal representation, only 12 percent were deported.” This quote is important because it is pretty straight forward and it showcases how important it is for an immigrant child to have a lawyer who can represent them as opposed to them doing it themselves.

The author’s writing style is very organized and very easy to follow. Egkolfopoulou starts off the article by describing what she sees as she steps into the immigration court in San Franscico. She paints a picture of how the court looks like a daycare almost due to the number of children waiting for their hearing. She then moves on to expand on the topic of unaccompanied minors and how having a lawyer as opposed to not having one, impacts them. Then, she starts focusing on the county of Fresno and how rural areas are less likely to have the necessary resources for these children due to how far they are from immigration courts. Every paragraph is very congruent with the points she is trying to make and they help the reader follow along and understand the information she is displaying.

Rhetorical analysis

This source is a magazine article. It is part of a series made by students at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism that touches on the severe economic and racial inequality in Fresno, the poorest major city in California. The author, Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou, is a student at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. The purpose of this article is to provide information on the topic of unaccompanied immigrant minors without legal representation to students, lawyers, journalists, and serious readers and thought leaders. I think that Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou does a great job of describing what these children are going through and how it affects them and their daily life. Her evidence is very credible because in the article she mentions how she had personally seen the immigration court where these children are showing up with no lawyer with them. She also interviewed two minors who actively went through a tough time as unaccompanied immigrant minors.

This article is implying that the need for legal counsel is beneficial and should be mandatory because there are many difficulties that these juveniles are facing. This is important to my research question because the source provides a lot of statistics and evidence as to why the lack of having a lawyer affects immigrant children. The lack of access to an attorney is detrimental to the benefit of these children. There were more children who got deported when they had to represent themselves as opposed to those who had a lawyer that helped represent them and were able to evade deportation.

Something that I learned as I was reading the article is that immigration courts are classified as civil courts which means that unaccompanied immigrant minors are not guaranteed the right to a government appointed attorney. This implies that they are responsible for paying and hiring their own legal counsel which is absurd given that they don’t have the money to pay for one. Similarly, something that shocked me is how there was a policy that was implemented for immigrants crossing the border illegally. “In April, the administration announced a “zero-tolerance” policy for immigrants crossing into the U.S. illegally, which led to the separation of thousands of children from their families. Those children are considered unaccompanied minors, and they are required to go through removal proceedings to determine whether they’ll be deported—with or without a lawyer.” (Egkolfopoulou, 2018). This policy made children get separated from their families unnecessarily which is outrageous. 

Quotables

“Of the nearly $3 million California spent in the 2017-2018 fiscal year to fund legal services for unaccompanied minors, $125,000 went to Fresno, a $40,000 increase from the year before.”

“A final decision on these children’s future could take anywhere from several months to two to five years.”