The influx of Latin American unaccompanied children fleeing gang violence and poverty across the southern U.S. border has so far brought about 300 children to sponsors in Durham, North Carolina. On Monday, the city council unanimously adopted a strongly-worded resolution in support of those children while they wait to see an immigration judge, making it the largest jurisdiction in the state to pass a welcoming resolution for immigrant children, according to the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
The Durham City Council passed a resolution to express its support for local government departments to provide services to the children, the vast majority of whom comes from the three Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The resolution thanked the Durham Public School system for educating the unaccompanied children, thanked the city’s Family Court for “dealing humanely” with the children, and asked federal agencies to ensure that children received “due process and legal representation in court hearings.”
According to the Office of Refugee and Resettlement, a total of 57,496 children were released to sponsors around the country in the 2014 fiscal year. Thus far, 2,160 children have been sent to sponsors in North Carolina, one of the highest receiving states for unaccompanied children.
While Durham became the fourth jurisdiction to support unaccompanied minors, other North Carolina counties are not so welcoming. Last September, Surrey County officials passed a resolution keeping children out of its county, raising concerns that the influx of children could put a strain on county resources and claiming that children could carry “serious disease.” Dare County council members considered a resolution “discouraging anyone from housing minors in the U.S. illegally before ultimately voting it down,” WRAL reported. Rowan and Brunswick Counties also recently passed similar resolutions.
Durham’s passed resolution is largely symbolic and makes no new law for unaccompanied children. Undocumented children already retain some constitutional rights, including that public schools cannot deny enrollment to students based on their legal status. And these rights are frequently unenforced. Just last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other civil rights groups filed a civil rights complaint asking the U.S. Department of Justice to look into two North Carolina school districts accused of discriminating against immigrant youths. In one case, a 17-year-old Honduran was told she was too old to enroll, even though state law allows students under 21 to a public education. In the second case, another 17-year-old Guatemalan was also told he was too old to enroll, then later told that he could enroll only after he took an English as a Second Language exam. That problem is not limited to North Carolina — a New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) survey found that school administrators in New York state discouraged enrollment at 86 school districts, requiring information or proof of residency that had a “chilling effect” on immigrants who might be too afraid to register because of their immigration status.