An Atlanta area attorney is preparing to travel to an immigration detention center in New Mexico next week to represent some of the Central American children and their parents who have recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
Joseph Rosen — who also teaches immigration law at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School — will be helping the detainees determine if they have viable claims for asylum in the U.S. and seek relief from deportation. A former U.S. Customs Service special agent, Rosen will be doing the work in Artesia, N.M., for free in connection with the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Tens of thousands of unaccompanied Central American children and teens have streamed across the southwest border in recent months. Many say they are fleeing extreme poverty and brutal gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Since January, the government has transferred more than 1,400 of them to the care of sponsors in Georgia, where many are undergoing deportation proceedings.
“For those with little or no resources that still see the U.S. as the sanctuary against evil that they have been subjected to, these hearings are their only hope,” Rosen said on his law firm’s Facebook page. “It humbles me to be a part of this and it also satisfies my sense of adventure and excitement to be a part of this effort.”
