The question that I decided that I want to research is, what are the benefits of appointing a lawyer to an unaccompanied immigrant minor? I focused on the terms unaccompanied, minors, court, and lawyer. I focused on those terms because they are very straight forward and it was what was going to help me find articles relating to my topic. Now here are my two sources:

Cheatham, A., & Roy, D. (2023, March 27). U.S. detention of child migrants. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-detention-child-migrants

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

The article “The thousands of children who go to immigration court alone” by Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou, talks about how unaccompanied minors who don’t have lawyers to help represent them, are more likely to get deported than those who do. The author includes many statistics that supports her claims and showcases how many children are affected. One of the 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 relates to the question because this statistic shows how detrimental it can be if a child isn’t represented correctly. The author also highlights the stories unaccompanied children that arrived in the states, more specifically, California in the county of Fresno, and how they 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. She also mentions how scarce the resources are for helping the minors and how it makes it difficult for them to be able to get an attorney when they have no money to pay for one, and the access to free attorneys is very hard to obtain.