Undocumented
Attorney Kathleen Gasparian, shown in front of the Monument to Immigrants at Woldenberg Park, started the Pro Bono and Juveniles organization as a way to provide legal services to immigrant chidren. P H O T O B Y C H ER Y L G ER B ER
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his education. Junior attends public school in New Orleans, and wants to be an architect. Sulmi Cantillano looks like a typical American 17-year-old. She wears big silver earrings, skinny jeans and white sandals, and the black eyeliner around her almondshaped eyes is applied perfectly. She is sweet-tempered and shy. But beneath that there is pain and fear. Sulmi fled Honduras in June with her two younger stepbrothers. When Sulmi was in seventh grade, she says, she was raped. Afterward, she was afraid to leave the house and her family received death threats against her and her relatives. So Sulmi came to New Orleans to live with family, leaving behind her 7-monthold baby. Sulmi did not think the infant would survive the journey and the border crossing, so her grandmother agreed to take care of the baby. Asked to describe her baby, Sulmi tears up; she only can say “preciosa.” The eight-day trip was scary, Sulmi says, but they made it with the help of a coyote (smuggler), crossing the Rio Grande in Texas and turning themselves over to U.S. Border Patrol agents. After 10 days in a detention center, they were released to a relative living in New Orleans. Sulmi says she wants to work so she can provide for her daughter. But Rosales-Fajardo has encouraged her to finish her education, telling her that is how she can best take care of her child. Right now, Sulmi is attending
public school and has a place to live, though those arrangements may not last. Sulmi says she is considering a career in law enforcement, so she can prevent what happened to her from happening to other girls. Elvis Diaz, 17, is more outgoing than Junior and Sulmi, with curly black hair, long dark lashes and a big smile. He has been in New Orleans for about a year and is enrolled in a public charter school. Elvis doesn’t understand all the strict “zero tolerance” rules, but he is getting by, and likes it “mas o menos.” But it doesn’t take long to see that smiling is also his defense mechanism. The more painful a memory a question elicits, the more Elvis smiles. Elvis says he came to New Orleans in hopes of reuniting with his mother, who came here for work when he was 8 years old. He hadn’t seen her since. It took Elvis three months to get to the United States. He made it to Mexico twice, only to be deported. The third trip took 15 days. The first attempt was scary, Elvis says, but not after that — it was just long. Elvis misses Honduras. He looks down, still smiling, and fights tears when he thinks about home, his father and brother. He doesn’t want to stay in New Orleans, but he knows it is too dangerous to return to Honduras. He hopes to go to college. But as with all the others who made it across the border, the courts will decide his future.
Being undocumented isn’t something Elvis likes to think about. “It feels terrible,” he says.
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ll the undocumented children are at risk of being deported back to the violence overwhelming Honduras. The legal challenges they face are lengthy and complex. Some also rely on family members who are also undocumented, though not awarded the same layer of protection as the juveniles. Their greatest need right now is legal representation, Rosales-Fajardo says. In a Metairie office building about 20 miles away from VAYLA’s home base, immigration attorney Kathleen Gasparian devotes her free time to the newly created “Pro Bono and Juveniles” (PB & J). Gasparian started the organization to connect lawyers and other volunteers to kids who cannot afford legal representation. In Louisiana, there is a severe shortage for pro bono legal services, Gasparian says, especially pro bono immigration legal services. Even if a child or family is able to pay, there are not enough lawyers trained in immigration law. In addition, Gasparian adds, the detention centers (including one of the largest in the country in Jena) are located far away from cities and adequate resources. The law provides protection for refugee youth — provided they can PAGE 22