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Immigration: Sponsors Take Children In by Louie Gilot LAS CRUCES—It was already dark Jan. 11, 2003, when the girl arrived at Alicia Cardona's neat Las Cruces house. It was one day after Cardona's 67th birthday. It was decades after she finished raising her seven children. But now, her family was sending her this scared 17-year-old Honduran girl, a stranger, to take care of.
"I was nervous. To tell you the truth I was afraid about what kind of person was coming into my house. At the same time I was ashamed of myself for feeling that way," Cardona recalled. The girl, Dunia Barahona, came to the United States at age 14, after a two-month trek through three countries. She was captured at Eagle Pass, Texas, and spent the next few years between an immigration detention center in El Paso and the house of distant family members in Connecticut. She had little contact with anybody back in Honduras. Right away, she called the older woman "abuela," grandmother. Mollified, Cardona decided, "God put her in my path." Dunia, now 19, still lives with Cardona—an arrangement they call a perfect match. Cardona's family is one of a few dozen local families who have volunteered to take in immigrant children over the years. These sponsors house and feed the child and make sure the child goes to school and appears at immigration hearings. The sponsors are not paid for their efforts. The need for sponsors is expected to increase this year because the number of children detained in El Paso for having sneaked into the United States without the proper papers has doubled, from about 50 to more than 100. Nationwide, the Department of Health and Human Services places more than half of the 5,750 children in immigration custody with sponsors, most of whom are relatives of the children. But in cases in which the children seek a special immigrant juvenile visa for abused, neglected or abandoned children, the sponsors are often perfect strangers. About five such cases arise a year in El Paso, according to Las Americas, an El Paso advocacy group that provides free legal representation to immigrant children. In El Paso, where five children are now being sponsored, two live with families that are not their own, and three live at charitable organizations. Last year, Randy Rankin, president and CEO of the Lee and Beulah Moor Children's Home in El Paso, took in a 17-year-old Honduran boy, who later returned to Honduras, and a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy, who went to live in a foster family in New Mexico. The boys went to El Paso High School for a year. Rankin said the boys had a "restlessness that came with their situation" and did not speak either English or Spanish, but a dialect from their countries. Nonetheless, Rankin said that the boys' stay went well and that he would volunteer to be a sponsor again in the future. In many cases, finding sponsors is the job of Sister Liliane Alam, executive director of Las Americas. Alam acts as a matchmaker, courting families until she feels their are ready to commit. In Dunia's case, Alam approached the Estradas of Las Cruces, whom she had known for years. Marta Estrada, a receptionist, and Enrique Estrada, a carpenter, and their four daughters decided they wanted to help Dunia. "So she has a normal life," Marta Estrada said. "So she has her American dream," Enrique Estrada added. Because their own house was overrun with foreign exchange students, the Estradas placed Dunia with Marta Estrada's mother, Alicia Cardona. But Dunia didn't come to the United States for the American dream. She said she was talked into accompanying her aunt. She turned 14 on the way, while hiding from immigration officials in Guatemala and Mexico. She traveled by foot and by bus with a small group of adults and children, buying new clothes in each new country to blend in, she recalled. Two months later, they arrived in Eagle Pass, where their smuggler directed them to the international bridge, saying that U.S. immigration officials on the other side would give them permits. Trusting, they crossed and were arrested, Dunia said. Now four years later, she has obtained a special immigrant juvenile visa and then a green card. She attends Oñate High School in Las Cruces and works for a telemarketer, conducting phone surveys in Spanish. She is active in her church and wants to go to college. She said the best thing in her life is her new family. "I have such a large family now. It's hard to learn all the names. There are five Martas, three Alicias and four Lupes," she said excitedly. "I don't need to suffer for what happened in the past. I see my life very differently now." |
