National Immigrant Justice Center

Children who flee abuse can often be mired in legal limbo 

CHICAGO, Jun. 9 - In 1999 the 9-year-old boy fled the Dominican Republic, where his abusive mother had tried to strangle him, forced him to kneel on a cheese grater and had her name tattooed on his arm as a symbol of her ownership.

The boy boarded a plane by himself and illegally entered the U.S. to join his father, who died in 2003. Two years later, police arrested the boy for bringing a knife to school and sent him to a federally funded detention center for illegal immigrant children in Indiana.

She finally wins clearance to stay in U.S. 

CHICAGO, Apr. 1 - For four years, she has told her story over and over, reliving every dehumanizing detail.

Today, the petite woman who was forced onto the international sex slave pipeline and escaped to Chicago can't stop smiling. A U.S. Immigration judge has ruled she can stay in the country.

Attorney Dawn Connelly and law students Adisa Krupalija and Jonathan Huckabay have worked pro bono to win asylum for an Eastern European woman who was held as a sex slave in Italy.

"Wow,'' she said, pumping her arms in the air like Rocky as she describes the tearful phone call from her attorney, Dawn Connelly, and an even more emotional one home to her mother.

WAUKEGAN, IL, Jan. 18—She is a homeowner, a taxpayer, a friendly neighbor and an American citizen. Yet because she is married to an illegal immigrant, these days she feels like a fugitive.

Whenever her Mexican husband ventures out of the house, “it makes me sick to my stomach,” said the woman, who insisted on being identified only by a first name and last initial, Miriam M.

“I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, he took too long,’ ” she said. “I’ll start calling. I go into panic.”

CHICAGO, Jan. 4 - Including his three-year stint with the U.S. Army, Rodrigo Alvear has worked for the federal government for 30 years, which he figured would make him a cinch for U.S. citizenship.

But almost five years after he applied, the Colombian immigrant who grew up on Chicago's North Side is still waiting to hear back on his case, among hundreds of thousands caught in a backlog caused by pending Federal Bureau of Investigation background checks.

DEC. 20 - Yesterday, Congress passed an omnibus appropriations bill (H.R.2764) for fiscal year 2008 for most major federal agencies. The president is expected to sign the omnibus bill into law.

The National Immigrant Justice Center (formerly the Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Center), a program of Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights, ensures human rights protections and access to justice for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers through direct legal services, policy reform, impact litigation, and public education.