The Center for Public Integrity

American families that have been split up for 10 years or more — or forced into exile — by immigration laws took their fight to Capitol Hill Thursday. Representatives testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee that is a crucial forum for public debate over possible immigration reforms.

“It is often said that our immigration laws are broken, but not why. It’s simple: Our laws contradict our values,” Randall Emery, president of American Families United, told members of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, which is under the Judiciary Committee. 

American Families United represents American citizens and U.S. legal permanent residents whose families have been separated for a decade or more by punitive immigration mandates.

As the Center for Public Integrity and KQED public radio reported recently, the undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents are forced, under a 1996 law, to serve a 10-year exile or more outside the United States before they can finish their applications to become legal residents.

Some undocumented spouses can obtain waivers to cut short these so-called bars, but many thousands are not eligible. Thousands of people are too afraid to even try to sponsor their undocumented spouses out of fear of being separated or forced to move abroad to remain together.

The Center’s story recounts the hardship families with children are facing after applying to legalize undocumented spouses — only to have U.S. officials ultimately order those spouses to stay out of the United States for 10 years, 20 years, even for life.

An unprecedented surge in deportations in recent years has affected tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of American children. The traumatic experience of losing a parent for an entire childhood — or being forced to move abroad to remain with that parent — is certain to have a profound impact on the mental health of these U.S. citizen children, according to researchers who have begun a study of this population.

This week, researchers based in Texas, California and Mexico released a joint announcement about a project they began last year to survey deportees’ American-citizen kids. Lead researcher Luis Zayas, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin, said he wanted to draw attention to his team’s work now because Congress has begun serious negotiations on immigration reform proposals. Zayas hopes legislators take into account the welfare of children whose parents face deportation.

“It’s disturbing because these children are citizens,” Zayas said. “Our country is not accustomed to turning people into exiles.”

The University of California at Davis’ Center for Reducing Health Disparities is also collaborating on the project, along with Mexico’s National Institute of Psychiatry.

The study, expected to be done by next year, is funded with a $182,000 grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Researchers are interviewing a total of about 80 children in the Austin, Texas, and Sacramento, Calif., areas, as well as children who’ve moved to Mexico to be with parents.

In post-Newtown America, those with power say they must act to prevent another massacre of innocents.

The Obama administration wants stiffer gun control, and $150 million to help schools hire up to 1,000 more on-campus police or counselors, or purchase security technology. State legislators are considering shifting millions of dollars around to help schools hire more police. Some locals aren’t waiting: The 5,500-resident town of Jordan, Minn., has moved its entire eight-officer police force into schools. 

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun,” National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said after a young man shot his way into his former grammar school on Dec. 14 in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 first-graders and six educators.

With the new year, the NRA has been flexing its political muscle, lobbying states not just to hire more school police — under the group’s National School Shield project — but also to pass laws allowing teachers or other staff to bring licensed guns to school to defend their students and themselves.  

Beyond the headlines, though, the push for more cops or other armed security personnel in schools is running headlong into another movement that’s been quietly growing in states as diverse as Mississippi, New York, Utah, Texas and California.

The United States still leads the industrialized world in incarcerating young people, and ethnic-minority kids are still locked up more than whites.

But there is good news: Since 1995, the rate at which states confine young people has been steadily dropping for all ethnic groups, reaching the lowest rate in 35 years in 2010, according to a report released Wednesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

In 1975, the child welfare and research group found, the number of youth aged 20 or younger placed in lockup began climbing, reaching a peak in 1995 of 381 kids locked up for every 100,000 nationwide. That same year, though, the rate began declining, dropping by an impressive 41 percent between 1995 and 2010 to 225 per 100,000.

The report by the Baltimore-based foundation also notes that the reduction in incarceration rates has not been accompanied by any increases in crime. “On the contrary,” the report says, “crime has fallen sharply even as juvenile justice systems have locked up fewer delinquent youth.” 

Laura Speer, associate director of policy reform and data at Casey, said in an interview that the report’s “main take away is that this is positive trend.” 

However, Speer said, some states still show relatively higher propensities for locking up youths – South Dakota is one – and across the country, black youth are nearly five times more likely to be confined than whites. Latino and American Indian youth are between two and three times more likely than whites to be locked up.

“There is still a way to go, across the country, to get equities in the way kids are treated throughout the juvenile-justice system,” Speer said. 

She cited several factors for contributing to the overall decline in youth incarceration.  

Americans whose spouses have been exiled for years as a result of strict immigration penalties took their plight to Congress Thursday, begging legislators to help them as lawmakers discuss overhauling immigration laws.

Some of the affected families met with a key figure in the immigration fight, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who told them that he believes there is a new bipartisan spirit in Congress, and a readiness to eliminate at least some of the mandatory penalties Congress approved in 1996. Members who approved the punitive laws in 1996 said they wanted to try to deter illegal immigration by punishing offenders more harshly. The penalties have split up families for years at a time.

The punishments, mandatory terms of exile known as “bars,” must be imposed on an undocumented spouse when he or she tries to go through the process of becoming a legal resident. Americans have a right to sponsor foreign spouses for legal residency, but their citizenship does not trump the penalties Congress currently requires be handed down.  

Thousands of Americans’ spouses — many of them parents of children who are U.S. citizens — have received these bars since they started kicking in, after delays, around 2002. A basic bar ousts spouses for 10 years. But some spouses have been barred for 20 years, even for life with no possibility of return. 

On Thursday, affected Americans with small children told Gutierrez of relocating to Mexico to reunite with spouses. They complained of multiple hardships, including health problems and threats of kidnapping and extortion.

Children involved in commercial sex trafficking are often recruited first by classmates at school who are doing the bidding of pimps, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other officials warned Wednesday at an event at the U.S. Department of Education.

Officials also warned that educators could unwittingly leave students vulnerable to victimization if they suspend or expel troubled students from school — leaving them unsupervised — or place them in alternative school settings where they are also exposed to potential recruiters.

“In my school district we are looking at our disciplinary practices,” said Jenee Littrell, director of guidance and wellness at the Grossmont Union High School District in San Diego County. She was invited to the U.S. Department of Education describe her efforts to identify and help school-aged youth exploited by pimps. The Obama Administration is attempting to disseminate more information to schools on this problem.

Littrell talked about two girls who, unknown to school staff, had become involved in child prostitution. The girls’ behavior had become especially aggressive with staff, and one girl was suspended from school, Littrell said. She was discovered at a track, an hour later, Littrell said.

Littrell said that, in her experience, girls who are lured into prostitution have been poor and affluent and from all ethnic backgrounds. But recruiters, both boys and girls working for pimps, Littrell said, zero in on kids in foster care and students with troubled home lives or special-education needs.

The state of Massachusetts is going to trial this week, fighting accusations that it is systematically failing to protect children in foster care from allegedly unfit foster homes,  physical abuse, medical and educational neglect, questionable psychotropic drug doses and other harm. 

Children’s Rights, a New York-based children’s national advocacy group, filed suit against Massachusetts Gov. Deval  Patrick and two health and human services officials in April 2010. The trial that opened in federal court in Boston Tuesday could last for weeks.

Massachusetts has a good reputation as a state concerned with child welfare, Children’s Rights’ executive director Marcia Robinson Lowry said. But after two years of research, her group was surprised to conclude that the state’s child-welfare system is “one of the most dangerous in the country on a number of significant measures.” 

The Children’s Rights’ suit is a class-action lawsuit with six young plaintiffs whose alleged neglect is specifically described, along with findings based on data measuring various aspects of children’s care. Massachusetts tried, unsuccessfully to get a court to block Children’s Rights’ pursuit of a class-action lawsuit representing all the state’s foster children, who currently number about 7,500.

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges is voicing concern over the push to put armed police or guards into American schools following the Newtown school massacre of 20 first-graders and six staff last December.

On Tuesday, the Reno, Nev.-based group posted an excerpt of a letter sent to Vice President Biden, who has been leading a month-long effort to gather ideas for more effective gun restrictions and improved school safety. The White House is reportedly poised to reveal some recommendations Wednesday at a midday press conference.

In its letter to Biden, the NCJFCJ expressed strong misgivings about the prospect of communities putting armed guards in schools – which could become even more likely if federal dollars are offered to help schools make that choice.

Published reports indicated Biden’s task force was considering such a plan, which has also been pushed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal Democrat from California. In addition, the National Rifle Association has been vocal in its backing of armed security in the nation’s schools.   

Echoing concerns by civil-rights and juvenile-justice advocates, the NCJFCJ warns in its letter than an expansive police presence in schools can lead to unintended and negative consequences. The judges’ group argues that the posting of police officers to ensure safety has in the past led to misguided crackdowns on kids.

As the White House considers proposals to allocate federal money for armed guards in schools, prominent school-discipline reform groups have issued a report denouncing the idea as a misguided reaction to the Newtown school shooting.

“Placing more police in schools has significant and harmful unintended consequences for young people that must be considered before agreeing to any proposal that would increase the presence of law enforcement in schools,”says an issue brief released Friday by the Advancement Project, Dignity in Schools and other organizations.

The Advancement Project, founded in 1999, has offices in Washington D.C. and California, and has worked with school districts and states to adopt alternatives to school suspensions and expulsions. Dignity in Schools is also devoted to working with school districts, advocating fewer school suspensions and less involvement of law enforcement in school discipline.   

The groups called on the White House and Congress, before they act, to consider how the school-discipline climate changed after more police were introduced to schools in response to the Columbine school shootings nearly 15 years ago in Colorado.

“We have seen what happens when [schools] ramp up police presence and other security measures in response to a shooting or other violent act. In Colorado, it resulted in more students getting arrested for minor misbehaviors, more students being pushed out of school, and a declining sense of safety in schools,” the brief says.

“These unintended consequences,” the report continues, “are persistent and pervasive – despite efforts by parents, students, and the school district, the high arrest rates and racial disparities that resulted from increased police presence and zero tolerance policies still exist.”

A new report by KPCC Southern California Public Radio focuses on continuing debate in Los Angeles over when it’s appropriate for school police to get involved in ticketing or arresting students.

In collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity, KPCC reported Monday that nearly half of all tickets issued in the mostly-minority Los Angeles Unified School District are still being given to students 14 or younger. The most common charge is disturbing the peace. That’s roughly the same proportion that previous Center and public radio reports found when analyzing older data. Administrators pledged reforms after those earlier stories.  

As the KPCC and Center joint report says, the L.A. district is continuing to institute “positive behavior support” methods in every school as way to both limit student suspensions and moderate law-enforcement involvement in discipline matters. The district’s “strategic plan” for 2012-2015 declares a commitment to “a non-punitive enforcement model that supports strategic problem-solving models rather than citation and arrest-driven enforcement.”

However, not all schools have adopted the new models. And the district hasn’t sufficiently clarified standards for ticketing, a Los Angeles student-parent group, the Community Rights Campaign, said in a Jan. 2 letter it sent to Superintendent John Deasy.