Parents who immigrated illegally to the United States now fear deportation under the Trump administration.
They are inundating immigration advocates with requests for help in securing care for their children in the event they are expelled from the country.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) advocacy group has been receiving about 10 requests a day from parents who want to put in place temporary guardianship for their children, said spokesman Jorge-Mario Cabrera.
In 2016, the group said it received about two requests a month for guardianship letters and notarisation services.
At the request of a nonprofit organisation, the National Lawyers Guild in Washington D.C. put out a call this week for volunteer attorneys to help immigrants fill out forms granting friends or relatives the right to make legal and financial decisions in their absence.
In New Jersey, immigration attorney Helen Ramirez said she was getting about six phone calls a day from parents. Last year, she said, she had no such calls.
“Their biggest fear is that their kids will end up in foster care,’’ Ramirez said.
President Donald Trump’s administration has issued directives to agents to more aggressively enforce immigration laws and more immigrants are coming under scrutiny by the authorities.
For parents of U.S. citizens who are ordered removed, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency “accommodates, to the extent practicable, the parents’ efforts to make provisions’’ for their children, said ICE spokesperson Sarah Rodriguez.
She said that might include access to a lawyer, consular officials and relatives for detained parents to execute powers of attorney or apply for passports and buy airline tickets if the parents decide whether or not to take the children with them.
Randy Capps of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a Washington-based non-profit that analyses the movement of people worldwide, said that while putting contingency plans in place is a good idea, he does not think the level of fear is justified.
During the previous administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, the likelihood of both parents being deported was slim, Capps said.
He doubts there will be a huge shift under Republican Trump toward deporting both parents. (Reuters/NAN)