The Obama administration announced this week that it is reserving space at a third military base to shelter up to about 600 children who are fleeing poverty and violence in Central America and illegally entering the U.S.
Fort Sill in Oklahoma will provide services to the children, who are mostly coming from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The government previously announced it is reserving emergency space for 1,200 of them at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas and about 600 at Naval Base Ventura County in California.
The White House has also announced a new effort aimed at providing attorneys for these children, who are placed in deportation proceedings when they arrive here. Called “Justice AmeriCorps,” the partnership is a joint effort led by the U.S. Justice Department and the Corporation for National Community Services, which administers AmeriCorps.
Federal law prohibits the government from immediately deporting these children to countries that don’t border the U.S. The law also requires federal immigration authorities to quickly turn them over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That agency places them in a network of group homes until they can be reunited with relatives in the states, including Georgia. The children remain with those relatives while they go through deportation proceedings.
The government doesn’t keep state-by-state statistics, so it is unknown precisely how many of these children are ending up in Georgia. But local immigration attorneys say they have noticed a substantial increase here since last year. Atlanta’s Immigration Court is now holding two days of hearings a month for young immigrants who are facing deportation. That is up from just a half a day last year. Some of these children are showing up in court without attorneys.
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