As number of unaccompanied minors crossing border rises, NJ arrivals try to start new life – NorthJersey.com

DOVER — Dario Alvarado had hoped life would be better in the U.S. He dreamed of connecting with family who’d show him the love the boy craved in Honduras.

After his mother had abandoned him, Dario was adopted by an aunt and uncle back home, he said. But he didn’t fit in; there were family clashes. And when his biological father urged him to migrate north, he jumped at the suggestion.

He crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2019, alone at age 16. Months later, he was released by immigration authorities to a cousin in Morristown who agreed to take him in. That lasted less than a year before Dario dropped out of high school and moved out on his own. Now, he lives in Dover and works in a factory making hand creams.

After a pandemic lull, unaccompanied minors are crossing into the U.S. in record numbers again, straining humanitarian services and creating a political challenge for the Biden administration. A look at some of the migrant children who have made their way to New Jersey shows both the long odds they face and the hopes that keep them coming anyway.

Dario Alvarado was 16 when he left Honduras two years ago and traveled alone to the U.S. He now lives on his own in Dover and works at a local factory. "What I need to do is stand up and continue to move forward."

“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have family, and what I need to do is stand up and continue to move forward,” Dario, who turned 18 in December, said in an interview. “I mistakenly thought it was going to be different, that I would be supported by family, and that I would receive support from other places. But it wasn’t that way.”

Dario is among more than 275,000 children who have crossed the U.S. border without a parent since October 2014, when an influx of young migrants arrived fleeing violence and poverty, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Those numbers remained high in the years that followed with the exception of last year, due to in part to the pandemic as well as former President Donald Trump’s policies, which included expulsions of unaccompanied children under ruled seeking to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

During the past nine months, those numbers have started to rise again, with more than 60,000 unaccompanied minors entering through the border. The resurgence has authorities scrambling to establish temporary housing for new entrants even as they search for parents and other guardians to take custody.

“The number of arriving children for this year will be the largest on record,” said Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.

15,000 to New Jersey

New Jersey has received almost 15,000 unaccompanied minors since 2014. Between the start of the federal government’s fiscal year in October and this April, 1,470 have been released to a parent or relative in the Garden State, placing fifth among the states, just behind New York, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.

They’ve settled mainly in Union, Essex, Hudson, Bergen, Morris and Monmouth counties, where they await immigration proceedings that will determine if they will be allowed to stay in this country.

Many have enrolled in local schools and dream of going to college; others, like Dario, have opted to work and pay back debts owed to relatives or smuggling operations that arranged their trek to the U.S.

“I dropped out of school because I had too many economic problems and I had no help from anyone,” said Dario. He now rents a room in Dover for $500.

Most children will end up deported, if past experience is a guide. Of the 60,000 immigration court cases involving unaccompanied minors between 2005 and 2014, just over half resulted in a removal order, another 20% in voluntary departure and the remainder ended with the child staying in the country, according to a Syracuse University analysis.

The latest surge is “a direct consequence” of Biden’s “clear position that they will be allowed to stay,” said Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington group that supports more immigration restrictions.

Easing the migration of unaccompanied minors ends up strengthening the power of criminal cartels that are both the root of violence back home and key players in the smuggling business, the group argues. “The cartels deliver the kids to the border, where they are handed off to the U.S. authorities who affect final delivery of the children to parents or other relatives, many of whom are themselves here illegally,” he said.

A report published earlier this month by the Migration Policy Institute said state, local and federal organizations need to step up care for the children, given the increased arrivals and Biden’s efforts to expedite releases to relatives in the U.S. The federal government offers case management for about 90 days, and very few children will get legal help, the group said.

“In many cases, they will not receive more than a 30-day follow-up phone call,” said Greenberg.

Valerie Orellana, a family support specialist at Accompany Now in Highland Park, which provides services for migrant children, said cases began ticking back up in January. The program, with offices at the Reformed Church of Highland Park, had to hire three more caseworkers in March, bringing the total to seven to meet demand, she said.

“There is still a huge waitlist,” she added.

Accompany Now helps children enroll in school and find free or low-cost immigration attorneys as well as health clinics for those who don’t have insurance. They also connect them to mental health services as well as food pantries.

Funds:New Jersey is flush with cash. How will lawmakers decide to spend it?

A new life up north

A 14-year old girl from Guatemala joins her father in New Jersey after crossing the border in 2014. She was among a surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America arriving at the border at the time. Many were released to guardians.

After Dario crossed the border in April 2019, he was detained by federal immigration officers and sent to a shelter for migrant kids in Arizona. He took classes, saw a therapist, and waited until his cousin was approved to take custody. He moved to New Jersey in September of that year and began classes at Morristown High.

But the following March, the coronavirus hit. Schools shut and learning English and the rest of his coursework remotely was a challenge, Dario said. He wasn’t getting along with his cousin and his aunt, who he lived with, so he dropped out of school and moved out on his own.

Unaccompanied minors and their sponsors often face money problems that can stress the relationship, the Migration Policy Institute said. Sponsors don’t receive any compensation from the government.

Dario currently works the late shift at the factory and has paid back most of the $4,800 debt for his trip, he said. He doesn’t have access to a kitchen, so he buys all his meals, a costly expense. He’s looking to work more hours, he said.

He’s lonely, but last year he connected with an older sister in New Jersey who was born in the U.S. Sometimes they eat together and talk.

Dario has an immigration court appearance scheduled for July, but he still needs to find a lawyer.

“It’s awful to know you have no one and if you happen to die, no one will ever know,” he says in a pensive moment. “But now I have my sister, so now I can count on her if something grave happens to me.

“But if she’s not around, I have no one.”

‘No one could guarantee I would live’

Damaris, 18, an immigrant from El Salvador, sharing a meal with her sister, Ashley. Damaris said she fled her home country after being threatened by gangs. She is now living with her mother in New Jersey and seeking to legalize her status in the U.S.

She left with a school backpack filled with clothes and a plastic bag with homemade cheese fries. It was 2018, and a 15-year-old girl was just beginning the long journey from her grandmother’s house in El Salvador to a mother in New Jersey who she hadn’t seen in person since she was a toddler.

The girl, Damaris, said she’d been threatened by a local gang just three days earlier. They took her to a dark street, pointed a gun at her head and demanded money. (Her immigration attorney asked that she be identified only by her first name to protect relatives back home.)

“They wanted me to sell drugs, and I said, no, and then they asked me for money, and my mom said no because they wanted $5,000,” she said in a recent interview. “No one could guarantee I would live if I stayed.”

Her mother had left years earlier, seeking better opportunities up north and leaving three children with their grandmother. After the threat, she arranged for a smuggler to get Damaris to Texas.

Every day people helping her get to the U.S. would send her mother pictures to show the teen was OK. In one photo, the girl sports a ponytail and smiles next to another woman, another migrant who held the hand of her own child. In another, she’s smiling at an airport as she awaits a flight – the first time she ever boarded a plane, she said. She flew from Mexico City to the border city of Reynosa, where she crossed the Rio Grande in a blue and yellow inflatable raft before landing in Texas, she said.

The smugglers left. Damaris and another woman with a 2-year old daughter walked for hours along the river before they spotted a group of seven children from Honduras traveling alone.

“We were older and we thought we could look out for them but they ended up leading us to the police,” she said.

Eleven days after beginning her trip, Damaris was in U.S. immigration custody. She was flown to Florida, where she lived in a children’s shelter for two months until her mother was approved to take custody of her.

In July 2018, Damaris got the approval to join her mother, Damariz, in New Jersey. They hugged at the airport in Newark.

“I hadn’t seen her for years, only through Facetime and by phone,” she said, “so seeing her in person was a bit strange.”

Damaris moved to Long Branch with her mother, sister, and stepfather. It was a challenge at first; they’d spent so little time together.

“I didn’t talk to her too much and we didn’t see each other that much,” she said. “Now we are very close.”

At Long Branch High School, Damaris met classmates who’d had to make a similar journey. Adjusting to another country hasn’t been easy, she said. She’s had to get accustomed to Jersey winters. But she said she’s looking forward to the future.

She recently got a job in a restaurant kitchen. She wants to make money to help her mother with the rent and other costs. She’s looking forward to starting her senior year in high school in September and going to college.

When she lived in San Salvador, she wanted to be a flight attendant, though she had never been on a plane. Now, she said she wants to be a doctor. She’s seen the difference between health care in her adopted country and her homeland, especially during the pandemic. She imagines returning to El Salvador to take care of sick children there, one day.

She said she knows that some Americans don’t like that children like her are coming across the border illegally, but she doesn’t see it that way.

“People have to understand that there are many opportunities for children in this country, children who are in danger and who might be on a wrong path and can come here and be corrected,” she said. “This country is the land of opportunities.”

Monsy Alvarado is the immigration reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news about one of the hottest issues in our state and country, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: alvarado@northjersey.com

Twitter: @monsyalvarado