LOS ANGELES — After Iryna Merezhko persuaded her sister in Ukraine that her younger nephew ought to be part of her in Los Angeles to attend out the struggle, she traveled midway across the globe to select him up. “I informed him it might be a California trip,” she recalled. “We’d go to Disneyland, Common Studios, the seashore.”
The boy, Ivan Yereshov, 14, made it along with her to Tijuana, Mexico, early this month, becoming a member of hundreds of Ukrainians ready on the border for permission to enter the USA.
To be on the protected aspect, Ms. Merezhko carried a notarized energy of legal professional testifying that Ivan had been handed over into his aunt’s care. However an officer knowledgeable them that Ivan couldn’t enter together with his aunt — as a result of she was not his mum or dad. “They informed us we’d be separated for one or two days,” recalled Ms. Merezhko, who mentioned she embraced Ivan as his preliminary enthusiasm dissolved into dismay.
Ten days glided by earlier than she would be taught his whereabouts.
Dozens of Ukrainian kids have been separated from family, buddies or older siblings with whom they’ve traveled to the southern border beneath a regulation designed to stop migrant kids from being trafficked. In impact since 2008, the regulation requires U.S. border authorities to position “unaccompanied minors” in authorities shelters, the place they have to stay till their guardians have been screened and permitted.
The brunt of the regulation has been felt by Central American kids, the most important group of minors to succeed in the border in recent times and who are sometimes fleeing gang violence. However these kids sometimes are conscious of the coverage and know that they are going to be taken into short-term custody. For Ukrainian kids, the separation from their caretakers has been an sudden, stunning twist of their escape from a struggle zone.
Equally tense scenes unfolded on the border beneath the Trump administration, which used household separations, typically for much longer ones, as punitive measures to discourage households from trying to cross into the USA. Beneath that coverage, even kids accompanied by their mother and father had been eliminated to authorities shelters.
“Think about — a few of these kids’s mother and father died or are combating; they’re traumatized from the struggle and the journey,” mentioned Erika Pinheiro, a lawyer with Al Otro Lado, a migrant help group that works with asylum seekers in Tijuana, a border metropolis that’s reverse San Diego. “Then they get separated from household, with out understanding why, and despatched to a shelter the place employees don’t converse their language.”
Ms. Pinheiro acknowledged that it was important to guard kids from potential traffickers, however she mentioned that extra cautious screenings on the border may alleviate the necessity for traumatic separations. “There are folks on the market who don’t have the kids’s finest curiosity at coronary heart,” she mentioned. “There are additionally a number of prolonged household who ought to be legitimately processed.”
U.S. authorities haven’t launched figures on what number of Ukrainian kids have been separated from caregivers, however volunteers working with the refugees mentioned they’ve counted at the least 50. As much as 20 kids have recently been arriving each day in Tijuana with somebody apart from a mum or dad, they mentioned. Typically these kids have a father who couldn’t go away the nation as a result of males should help the struggle effort and a mom who couldn’t journey. Their mother and father entrusted another person to ferry them to the USA.
Customs and Border Safety mentioned in a press release that it was required by regulation to switch minors who usually are not accompanied by a mum or dad or authorized guardian to authorities shelters.
“Caring for our most susceptible populations, together with kids, is of utmost significance,” the company mentioned.
Migrant advocates concede there’s a threat of kids changing into susceptible to trafficking and exploitation amid the chaos of struggle, however say U.S. authorities are imposing the regulation inconsistently, sowing confusion and heartache. Typically a toddler touring with an grownup sibling has been eliminated to a shelter, however not all the time. Many kids have been separated from aunts, grandparents or buddies; others have been launched to proceed on with them.
Final month, Molly Surazhsky of Brooklyn, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, escorted Liza Krasulia, 17, whose mom is a detailed household buddy, from the place she had escaped the struggle in Poland to the southern border.
Ms. Surazhsky mentioned she had consulted an immigration lawyer in New York who had mentioned that she didn’t foresee any issues. They carried a notarized letter from the mum or dad giving Ms. Surazhsky authority to look after Liza.
However on March 30 on the border, officers informed them that they must maintain the lady for as much as two days. “They mentioned, ‘She will likely be handled higher than we’re,’” Ms. Surazhksy recalled.
Liza was shocked and commenced to sob.
“I informed her, ‘Don’t fear. I’m not going wherever with out you.’”
After checking right into a lodge in San Diego, Ms. Surazhsky acquired a name from Liza, who by then was much more distraught. Officers had confiscated her telephone, baggage, e book — and shoelaces. She was sharing a cell on the border with 25 ladies and kids from Ukraine, Russia and different international locations, all attempting to sleep on the ground with solely flimsy foil blankets to cowl them.
A couple of days handed earlier than Ms. Surazhsky discovered that Liza had been transferred to a migrant kids’s shelter within the Bronx.
She submitted 40 pages of paperwork and fingerprints, and waited for approval to formally sponsor her.
On Monday, she was knowledgeable that Liza could be launched from the shelter the next day, three weeks after they’d crossed the border.
“Whereas I perceive the need of vetting caretakers, there needs to be a greater means for the federal government to do that with out inflicting extra trauma on the kids,” mentioned Ms. Surazhsky, a textile artist. “They’re making children really feel like prisoners.”
Casey Revkin, a co-founder of the nonprofit Every Step House, which helps migrant households navigate the reunification course of, mentioned that for years Central American kids have been unnecessarily eliminated on the border from grandparents, adopted mother and father and siblings.
“The federal government may ship social employees to the border to confirm the familial relationship and keep away from the trauma of separating these kids, who’ve gone via a lot, from their caregivers,” Ms. Revkin mentioned.
Ms. Pinheiro identified that in the course of the Afghan evacuation, the U.S. authorities issued a directive that instructed authorities to permit kids to stay with “nonparental caregivers” with whom they’d entered the nation, relatively than be transferred to shelters.
The federal government shelters the place the kids are being taken are operated by a separate authorities company, the Division of Well being and Human Providers. The company mentioned in a press release that its position was to not make “immigration determinations.”
“Our job is to supply them with care and safety whereas they’re in our short-term custody,” the assertion mentioned.
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Within the case of Ms. Merezhko, who has lived in the USA since 2014, the household had decided to attempt to get Ivan to security in Los Angeles as shortly as doable, with out ready for the USA to start issuing permission for refugees to fly instantly. Getting into via Mexico, which doesn’t require visas for Ukrainians, has been a stopgap measure for an estimated 5,000 Ukrainians because the struggle started in February.
Ms. Merezhko spent about $7,000 to buy airline tickets, took a go away from her job as a pharmacy technician and got down to retrieve the boy. They rendezvoused in western Ukraine, after he had managed to board an evacuation prepare out of the besieged metropolis of Kharkiv, the place the household lived.
“I believed I used to be doing the fitting factor as a result of it was the one approach to save the kid, to convey him to a protected place,” she mentioned.
From Madrid, they boarded a flight to Monterrey, Mexico, and linked on April 6 to Tijuana. They slept in a tent erected outdoors a fitness center that was already overflowing with Ukrainians ready to report back to the border checkpoint for processing.
When it was their flip two days later, Ms. Merezhko mentioned, Customs and Border Safety officers rigorously studied the paperwork and notarized letter from Ivan’s mom stating that her sister had been granted full duty for him.
An officer informed them that they must be separated — for only one or two days.
“Every little thing will likely be OK,” Ms. Merezhko assured Ivan.
The next day, her telephone rang, and an officer put Ivan on the road. “Mama, Mama, is that you simply?” he requested, considering it might be his mom in Ukraine.
His aunt’s coronary heart sank. Within the 60-second change, all that he was allotted, the boy mentioned he was nonetheless on the border. The officer informed Ms. Merezhko to anticipate one other name quickly.
Days glided by, no name got here and her nervousness mounted.
Ms. Merezhko discovered that Ivan was now most likely at a authorities shelter, and he or she discovered the variety of a hotline for households attempting to find kids.
An attendant confirmed that Ivan was within the system, and informed his aunt that she could be contacted by a case supervisor in just a few days.
“I acquired no details about how he’s, the place he’s,” Ms. Merezhkho recalled.
Days handed.
She referred to as the hotline once more, and an operator urged her to be affected person: It may take 20 to 30 days earlier than Ivan was launched, she mentioned, and that course of had not even began.
Throughout an anguished name, Ms. Merezhko’s sister, Kateryna, informed her that she now regretted sending away her solely little one. “At the least we’d know the place he was if he had stayed with us,” she informed her.
Over the weekend, with the assistance of Ms. Revkin, from the nonprofit, Ms. Merezhko stuffed out 25 pages of types to which she connected inexperienced playing cards, marriage certificates, beginning certificates and pay stubs for her and her husband. But she had nowhere to ship the file.
Lastly, on Monday, Ms. Merezhko’s husband, Vadym, acquired a name from Ivan, who mentioned he was at a shelter in California. A case employee mentioned they may ship the paperwork. However there nonetheless was no phrase on when Ivan could be launched.
“Excellent news right now,” Ms. Merezhko mentioned. “However I’m somewhat bit fearful about how lengthy will probably be.”