Bay Area Mom Leads Charge to Help Central American Minors Join Parents in U.S.

Thousands of children and young adults living in often dangerous conditions in Central America may be able to join their parents in the U.S. after the federal government agreed to a court settlement in San Francisco this month.

Their immigration cases had been stalled since 2017, when the Trump administration phased out an Obama-era program that offered humanitarian protections to minors in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But now immigration officials are moving to reopen the cases of approximately 2,700 people covered in the lawsuit, S.A. v. Trump.

"We are thrilled. This is a huge victory,” said Kate Meyer, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project who represents the 13 plaintiffs in the U.S. and Central America who filed suit last summer. “Our clients finally have some hope that they'll be able to reunite."

The Trump administration ended the Central American Minors Parole Program as part of a broader effort to restrict the number of refugees admitted.

Thousands of young people who were on the verge of travel to the United States were suddenly turned down. Immigration officials had conditionally approved them for parole, pending routine medical exams and background checks, said Meyer.

Only cases with urgent humanitarian or public benefit reasons are granted parole, which allows noncitizens to temporarily stay in the U.S., and apply for work authorization and asylum.

The 53-year-old Bay Area woman leading the lawsuit, Santos, said government officials instructed her to pay for her daughter and young grandson’s plane tickets. (KQED is not using Santos’ last name because her relatives fear gang members in El Salvador).

Her daughter had already packed her bags, Santos added, when they learned they couldn’t legally move to the U.S. after all.

“I felt cold, like all our dreams were thrown in the trash,” said Santos, who lives in the East Bay and has worked for the same hair salon for 12 years. “It was very difficult. We cried a lot.”

The government later refunded Santos nearly $3,000 for the tickets, she said, but not additional expenses in her two-year application process.

Under the CAM program, vulnerable people under age 21 whose parents are lawfully residing in the U.S. could be processed in their home countries for refugee or parole status.

The Obama administration started the CAM program in 2014, as one way to try to reduce a huge surge of minors fleeing Central America on their own trying to reach relatives in this country.

The policy aimed “to provide a safe, legal, and orderly alternative to the dangerous journey that some children are currently undertaking to the United States,” according to a 2014 U.S. Department of State fact sheet.

“I think it was a great program in theory. On the ground, though, it operated very slowly and the numbers that ended up qualifying were quite small,” said Sarah Pierce, an attorney with the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

More than 13,000 people applied, but only about 3,000 cases were admitted to the U.S. through the program, according to the legal complaint filed on behalf of Santos and the other plaintiffs.

Still, Pierce said the shutdown of this program — for people to be processed in their home countries — contributes to the wave of Central American families and unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S. border to ask for humanitarian protections.

“If anyone in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras wants to apply for asylum in the United States, they need to travel to the U.S. border,” she said.

Top U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say the agency’s capacity is overwhelmed by the number of children in family units or traveling on their own in their custody, which they call “an unprecedented humanitarian and security crisis.”

Last month, Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 9,000 unaccompanied minors and 53,000 migrants in family groups — more than any month since the government began tracking children traveling with parents.

While people living in Central America have other avenues to pursue humanitarian protections in the U.S., such as through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, experts say that, practically speaking, those rarely succeed.

After Santos and other parents sued to restart their children’s applications, immigration officials told the federal court last week that the earliest they could issue travel documents is late October. They will need to collect medical examinations and background checks in each case that is still eligible, and reopen facilities and contracts that had been shut down.

A spokeswoman with U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services declined to comment on the settlement or plans to implement it.

But plaintiff attorney Daniel Asimow said the new government timeline is not fast enough for the 2,700 minors covered in the lawsuit who are still facing danger in Central America.

“The government does face some challenges, and we are sympathetic to that,” said Asimow, whose law firm is based in San Francisco. “However, we think there are some steps that potentially could be expedited.”

For example, Asimow said only five doctors in El Salvador were approved to conduct the necessary medical exams.

“So we are going to talk to the government to see if there’s any way to get more doctors on contract to speed up those steps,” he said.

Santos, sitting on a couch in her immaculate apartment, said she feels hopeful once again that she and her family will reunite in the Bay Area.

“I have faith that this time, we’ll be able to be together soon,” she said.