LOS ANGELES (AP) – With tens of thousands of Central American immigrants arriving on the U.S.-Mexico border in the last two years, federal authorities are launching a program Thursday to encourage more of them to show up for their hearings in immigration court.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement hired a contractor to help some immigrant families find transportation, housing and low-cost lawyers, hoping that getting them on stable footing will make them more likely to attend court hearings that determine whether they should be allowed to stay in the country or deported.
When immigrants show up for court, federal authorities can keep track of asylum cases to ensure those who lose return home. Advocates want immigrants to attend the hearings because they believe many of those arriving from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have a strong shot of winning asylum but must be in court to do so. Judges routinely issue deportation orders for those who don’t show.
As many as 800 families who pass an initial asylum screening can join the program in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Chicago and Miami starting Thursday. Caseworkers will help newly arriving immigrants with tasks such as finding transportation to immigration court and enrolling their children in school. Later, they will help those who lose their bids to stay in the country head home.
The program will cost $11 million a year and reach a tiny sliver of the 54,000 Central American immigrants with children who have arrived on the southwestern border since October 2014. It comes as the Obama administration faces court-imposed limits on the detention of immigrant families and as authorities began arresting those who lost their asylum cases in raids earlier this month.