Q&A
Panelists discuss similar cases and issues with ACS
0:52:01
·
5 min
Council Member Alexa Avilés asks other panelists about similar cases to Mamadou's. Jamie Powlovich and Kimberly Schertz provide detailed responses, highlighting systemic issues with ACS and the challenges faced by unaccompanied immigrant youth.
- Powlovich describes a pattern of ACS not believing young people and trying to prove them ineligible for services
- Schertz points out inconsistencies across city agencies in identifying and supporting unaccompanied minors
- Both panelists emphasize the difficulties in getting ACS to take these youth into care, including issues with documentation and reporting processes
Alexa Avilés
0:52:01
Can I ask one of maybe maybe Thule other panelists?
0:52:06
Have you seen cases similar to this?
0:52:09
Can you give us a little bit of experience around this?
Jamie Powlovich
0:52:19
I mean, particularly in my previous role, I've seen a lot of cases like this, and they usually play out very similar to what was just explained was his situation, which I was also involved in, where a young person finds an advocate or another trusted adult in the community.
0:52:40
They're not being identified through any systems or government agencies that are actually tasked with doing this work, and then they would reach out to me when I was previously at the coalition for homeless youth.
0:52:54
And then we would advocate with both ACS to have them taken into care as destitute miners and also with the DUIC running homeless youth providers to provide immediate support, whether it was at a drop in center or a shelter.
0:53:09
And I think that one of the most concerning things that we've seen a pattern of, which has been talked about here, is just ACS's approach of not believing young people.
0:53:22
And seems like overwhelmingly they are trying to do everything to prove the young people ineligible for services as opposed to welcoming them with trust.
0:53:34
Right, that their stories are real, and their experiences are valid, and then trying to work to advocate, to make them eligible for services.
0:53:43
And we've seen that consistently, and especially with telling the young people that their documentation isn't isn't valid, that they are lying, those are constant things that come up, that young people are being told by child protective service workers, And there's also no consistency in what documentation they're referring to.
0:54:06
We've seen young people whose passports indicate that they are minors, and there's clerical errors at the border where there are things like notice to appear tickets.
0:54:16
Have the same month's day, but a different year making them eighteen or older when all their other documents make the miners.
0:54:23
ACS refuses to accept them as miners.
0:54:26
Then we've seen young people whose passports were, you know, falsified so that they could flee.
0:54:32
But all their other documents, birth certificates from their home country indicate that they are, in fact, minors, and then ACS does not take them.
0:54:40
And so there's also just no consistency in what documentation they're saying young people need.
0:54:46
And like my partner at the legal aid society testified to, it's not in statute or regulation anywhere.
0:54:53
1, that they need any documentation and 2, if they did what that documentation has to be.
Kimberly Schertz
0:55:01
And if I may add a couple of things, so there also appear to be inconsistencies across city agencies.
0:55:12
We have had a couple of views where a high school principal.
0:55:16
These children were enrolled in school.
0:55:18
They were connected with community based organizations.
0:55:21
And the principal believed them, believed that they were the ages that they said they would, and even informed me that if she thought that they were older that she would have discussed with them the possibility of pursuing a GED program.
0:55:37
But because she believed that they they were the age they said they were, she enrolled them in their appropriate grade level, and she found it quite appalling.
0:55:46
The hoops that had to be jumped through to get ACS to take these kids into care.
0:55:52
And I believe there have been staff at the the Hertz as well, who have identified that these are kids, not adults, and they're the ones connecting the youth to community based organizations.
0:56:08
And that's where we're getting our referrals from as well as from community based organizations that these youth are connected to.
0:56:16
And I also want to highlight that ACS, like I said in my testimony is insisting that reports we made to the State Central Registry.
0:56:24
That's not a legal necessity.
0:56:28
I have a youth who still hasn't been identified by ACS.
0:56:32
No investigation has been convinced.
0:56:34
He's got a long complicated name, so it's possible that whoever's, you know, the community based organizations or the advocates who are calling in the reports for him are not spelling his name correctly or they may not be using the right terminology.
0:56:49
They may not be saying this is a destitute child.
0:56:52
They're not lawyers.
0:56:52
They don't know what terminology needs to be used to flag this case for the SCR to process it as a destitute child case.
0:57:01
And this it's it's significant significant delays because we can't even get an investigation started.