Susan Morée speaks with editors from El Paso Matters. El Paso Matters is a member-supported nonpartisan media organization that uses journalism to expand civic capacity in our region. They inform and engage with people in El Paso, Ciudad Juarez and neighboring communities to create solutions-driven conversations about complex issues shaping our region.
Susan Morée:
It sounds like there's a lot going on in El Paso right now in terms of immigration.
You have a big story about that right now, right?
Bob Moore:
Yeah, and it really goes beyond El Paso. It's very much a national story, as many of these are. And this involves what are known under the law as unaccompanied immigrant or migrant children. These are generally children who come to the United States without authorization, without a parent or guardian. In other cases, though, they may be children who came with a parent, and the parent has been placed in ICE custody, and the child has been separated and put into a separate system to handle children. But most of these are kids whose families have sent them northward to come to the United States for economic reasons, to flee gang violence. There's a lot of different reasons, and this has been a significant problem for more than a decade now, and various administrations have really struggled with this. The Trump administration is really trying to solve the problem by deporting these children as soon as they can. And so our editor, Cindy Ramirez, has spent time in immigration court over the last few weeks. She's seeing, you know, kids as young as six or seven in the court. Some of them have lawyers, but most of them don't. You know, it's obviously very heartbreaking to watch all of this. And Cindy focused on the case of a seven-year-old boy from Peru who came here with his father. His father was taken into custody, was placed at Camp East Montana, the big detention facility in El Paso, and then deported back to Peru without his son. And so the son is no longer trying to stay in the United States. They're trying to finalize a process that will allow him to return voluntarily to Peru. But that's not a real simple thing to do. So really heartbreaking stories. But the Trump administration is determined to get these kids out of the country as quickly as they can. Most of them increasingly are held in Texas because it's close to the border. They're held by a component of the Department of Health and Human Services called the Office of Refugees Resettlement. And obviously, being away from home, these kids are scared, don't know what they're doing. Increasingly, as I've said, the Trump administration, they're just trying to get them gone. One of the ways they're doing that is by cutting off or trying to cut off financial support for legal services for these children. And that will lead us into the second big development of this week.
Susan Morée:
And that is about a primary provider who is facing financial collapse. What do you have to tell us about that?
Bob Moore:
So the largest provider of services to legal immigration services to unaccompanied children is called Estrella del Paso. It is a ministry of the El Paso Catholic Diocese. It's been doing this since 2007. There are tens of thousands of people in El Paso,maybe hundreds of thousands by now, who've relied on this organization to help them on their legal immigration journey. Much of their revenue in recent years has come from providing services to children that are then reimbursed by the federal government under an anti-trafficking law. This is the law of the land passed by wide bipartisan majorities over the years to try to protect children. The Trump administration last year tried to defund these programs. Estrella and 10 other organizations went to federal court, got a court order blocking the Trump administration from doing that more than a year ago. The Trump administration resumed the reimbursements for a while, but then in December stopped and basically started trying to get more information out of these providers, including information that the providers consider to be legally privileged information, attorney-client privilege. And so it's created the standoff with Estrella and these other organizations that have held up millions of dollars in payments, and that includes about $760,000 to Estrella. That has forced Estrella to basically eat through all of its cash reserves. And they kind of announced last week that they are on the verge of having to close because of this, and not just close the services to children, but to all of the immigrants in our region that they've been helping.
Susan Morée:
Okay, thanks so much, Bob. And where can readers find these stories? And also, you have a podcast, I believe.
Bob Moore:
Yeah, yeah, so a good reminder. We also have a podcast with Cindy Ramirez, our editor, and Diego Mendoza-Moyers, our podcast host, talking about these issues. And you can find all of these stories and other stories about the most important developments in our region at ElPasoMatters.org.