A Home For Minors: How do undocumented minors create a community in L.A.?

*This is part of an interactive, multimedia project. To view the whole project —including videos, pictures, radio pieces and more — visit the website here.*

About

Over 68,000 children have been caught crossing the border since October 2013. Others have crossed un-apprehended. These children are fleeing murder, rape, economic depression and a lack of jobs in Central America.

Most children are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Honduran children made up 27 percent of the apprehensions at the border in 2014. The country currently has the world’s highest murder rate. San Pedro Sula sent 2,000 children alone during last year’s influx. According to the Pew Research Center, over 13,000 Honduran children were apprehended at the border this year.

This multimedia project looks at what happens once the children cross the border. How do they integrate themselves into the Los Angeles community? How do they learn when they do not speak the language? This project attempts to answer these questions — and more.

TO USE THE INTERACTIVE MAP, CLICK HERE.

Creating a Home: Lindy and Aldo’s Stories

At only 11, Lindy Delgado had lost almost everything. She was born in El Salvador and her short life was plagued with violence. Her family dealt with threats from gang members and drug cartels. Two of her cousins were killed and the rest of her family faced such severe threats that they decided to leave.

At first, the family only had enough money for the parents to get across the border. Lindy’s mom and dad left Lindy and her five-year-old sister with relatives in El Salvador and crossed the border in order to make money and set up a home in the States.

“It was very scary to know my children were coming alone but it was better than what we were threatened with, we were threatened with harm,” said Maria Delgado, Lindy’s mother.

This January, Lindy’s parents paid a group to get Lindy and her sister across the border alone. However, Border Patrol apprehended them in Texas. They spent 11 days in immigration hold in Texas, receiving only a meal a day. They could not call their parents. Finally, they were transferred to an association that helped the girls contact their parents.

Now, the whole family is together in Los Angeles. Lindy’s mom is seeking asylum for both her daughters because she fears that if either of them return to El Salvador, they may die.

“If they were to get deported, they’d be alone,” Maria said. She fears the drug lords who were threatening her family before would find and kill her daughters.

While Lindy is still undocumented, the family is slowly building a safer and more comfortable home here in Los Angeles. But what about the other thousands of undocumented minors who are crossing the border?

Over 68,000 children have been caught crossing the border since October 2013. Others have crossed without being caught by the Border Patrol. These children are fleeing murder, rape, economic depression and a lack of jobs in Central America. Most of them do not know English when they arrive and are either shoved into schools or forced into jobs. But they also make friends, attend school and eventually create a home.

Why Cross?

Why do children such as Lindy make such a traumatic journey, and why do they make it alone?

“Children come alone because that’s what funding allows,” said Stephanie Canizales, a USC phD candidate. She is one of the few people studying how unaccompanied minors integrate into society. “Parents don’t want their children to migrate a lot of the time but children take it upon themselves to say, ‘I need to get out of here.’ And a lot of parents are already in the U.S., working and have been for years and children who are looking for family reunification, they come alone, because their parents are already here settled in the U.S. So it just depends on really, what is the family dynamic, what is the set-up and conditions of each community.”

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Most children are fleeing violence or sexual abuse. The most recent influx was mainly children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Honduran children made up 27 percent of the apprehensions at the border in 2014. The country currently has the world’s highest murder rate. San Pedro Sula sent 2,000 children alone during last year’s influx. According to the Pew Research Center, over 13,000 Honduran children were apprehended at the border this year.

Other children are fleeing poverty, such as in Guatemala. El Salvador, where both Lindy and Juarez are from, has a high rate of gang violence. Guatemalan children made up 25 percent of the apprehensions at the border, while Salvadorians made up 24 percent, according to a study released by the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University.

TO USE THE INTERACTIVE MAP, CLICK HERE.

Since many families cannot afford to all go together, parents make the tough decision of going first and sending for their children after, or vice-versa.

“If you have a 5, 6, 10, 11-year-old child and you are willing to send them by themselves, you send them whatever hard-earned dollars you have, send them on their own to a place you think they are going to be safe, it is a very hard decision,” said Eliseo Medina, a Mexican-American labor union activist and leader. “The parents who decide to do that, it’s an incredible decision.”

Miriam Joya, who is earning a Master’s degree in Social Work at the University of Southern California, works with children in the Los Angeles Unified School District, many of whom, she said, came across the border to escape.

“A lot of children come with severe trauma, such as sexual abuse, such as family members being tortured, (or) being kidnapped,” she said. “They are not coming here for economic reasons, they are running away and trying to survive in one way or another.”

Building a Home

In 1989, when Aldo Juarez was only six years old, his family fled the civil war in El Salvador and moved to the U.S.. The same men who promised them a safe crossing robbed his family at the border.

“Crossing into the border was difficult, to say the least. The person who brought us here purposely brought us through to rob us. And so that was pretty traumatic because it was three armed men with guns pointing at us,” he explained. He also said he saw women get “frisked pretty heavily.”

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Similar to Lindy, Aldo, along with his brothers, needed to then create a home in Los Angeles. School was — and still is —an essential way for most undocumented minors to make friends or connections outside their family. All schools in the United States are required to accept students despite their legal status.

However, when Aldo came, there were no English as a Second Language courses.

“(School) was extremely difficult, just cause at the time there was no, like, ESL classes or even, they hadn’t incorporated speaking in English and in Spanish to the kids,” said Aldo. “So even though my teachers were Hispanic, they weren’t able to speak Spanish. So communicating with them was pretty hard so it made it kind of difficult for me to even learn.”

He slowly learned English and made friends with other Spanish speakers in class.

“My friends were made in school, we communicated in Spanish and that’s how I learned English too, some of them had been here longer than I had so I learned from them by asking them what that meant or starting conversations, but mostly it was having fun at recess,” he said.

But Joya, the USC graduate student, says there are still not enough transitional programs for the students, many of whom came to the U.S. to escape trauma but may have encountered trauma on the way. Then they are forced to sit in classes where they don’t speak the language.

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“Some students say they’re scared of even speaking out or raising their hand because they don’t want their peers to look at them weird,” Joya said.

Joya thinks students find friends based on their shared experiences.

“What I’ve noticed is that you’re basically in survival mode, you need to find your group of friends and when you do, you need to stick with them,” said Joya. She says that a lot of times children seem proud of their nationality, and that while they have different backgrounds, “they share the struggle.” Joya says it is important to help the children know they have a community and that their experience is important to them staying in school.

Lindy still does not speak any English, but she says she’s learning. She has found friends at school; however, her little sister, who crossed the border with her, is currently being bullied at school for not speaking English.

What’s Next?

Recent reports indicate that another influx of minors is expected. According to KRGV, Border Patrol officers are already preparing for another surge.

“Unaccompanied children have been crossing the border for years,” said Niels Frenzen, a USC clinical professor of law and the director of the Immigration Clinic. “There are seasonal variations in the number of people crossing the border and then there are other reasons why there are surges at various times … word of mouth certainly had something to do with that, so do conditions that force people out of their homes.”

Meanwhile, Lindy Delgado and Aldo Juarez continue to try to develop a home here. Lindy, despite the trauma she has seen, is a happy pre-teen. Her favorite activity is going to Chuck E. Cheese’s.

But even after all this time, Juarez doesn’t feel at home in Los Angeles and doesn’t know if he ever will. However, he hopes for the best for the current and future undocumented minors and continues to search for a home.

“Sometimes I still feel out of place here, after all these years,” Juarez said. “I don’t feel like L.A. is my home but I don’t feel like my own country is my home. Literally displaced I guess. But I am hoping to find it one day.”