Latin American Studies

This note analyzes the US Government's approach to unaccompanied minors and the webs they must navigate when they are apprehended by the US immigration system. More importantly, this note calls for reformative approaches to children's rights through acknowledging the differences between adults and children while simultaneously taking their vulnerability and autonomy into account. After explaining the migrant crisis along with its implications and examining the underlying reasons fostering this movement, this note discusses the legal options available for unaccompanied minors. It draws on the shortcomings of the immigration system as the system labels unaccompanied minors as dependent children, but also treats them as adults. Further, this note establishes and calls attention to the long-term impact of this system on detained children. The note concludes by examining international law—more specifically, the Canadian approach—outlining how the US system can adopt certain policies to better its treatment of unaccompanied minors and refrain from further human rights violations.

This case explores the complex ways unaccompanied Latinx Indigenous minors experience the intersection of immigration policies and U.S. school policies and practices and the implications this has for school leaders. As such, we present three critical incidents that center three students' experience with and through U.S. schooling—from enrollment, to navigating schooling linguistic support, and then finally the ways in which disciplinary policies heighten the consequences of immigration reform. Through the critical incidents, readers will meet Santiago, Manuel, and Cristian Indigenous unaccompanied minors and examine the ways in which school leaders and schooling practices shape and impact the schooling experiences of undocumented, unaccompanied, Latinx Indigenous students.

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