Status Updates From Tell Me How it Ends: An Ess...

Nimmi Gowrinathan came to give us a lecture on the fundamentals of political activism. She insisted that the most important thing was to know how to transform emotional capital–the rage, sadness, and frustration produced by certain social circumstances–into political capital.

According to a comprehensive report issued in October 2015 by the Migration Policy Institute, the majority of children who find a lawyer do appear in court and are granted some form of relief. All the others are deported, either In absentia or in person. What is needed in particular, and urgently, are lawyers who are willing to work pro bono.

It's very difficult to be granted asylum because it's not enough that these children have suffered unspeakable harm, that they will continue to fall victim to the systematic & targeted violence of criminal groups. The harm or prosecution must be proved to be because of at least one of those four classifications. The main problem with asylum is that if it's granted, the children can never return to their home country.

An amendment to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which was signed by President Bush in 2008 states that children from countries that share borders with the US can be deported without formal immigration proceedings. If a child comes from Mexico or Canada, he or she is immediately "deportable"– a "removable alien". This was Bush's last gift to immigration law in his vast legacy of chingaderas.