This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceeding
ANNE KELSEY: All right, we'll get started. But, please, feel free to move around and make yourself comfortable and ask questions, we're a pretty small group, so we can make it a little more interactive, since we have that capability. We do have the PowerPoint, but it's also available for you guys if you do want to look at it later, because we'll go through some points pretty quickly. So we'll get started. I'm Anne. I use she/her pronouns, and I am the Disability Rights Policy Analyst at the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights. Amy.
AMY LEIPZIGER: Hi, I'm Amy. I use she/her pronouns. Up until six weeks ago I was a senior staff attorney in education and disability at legal services in New York City. I'm the Project Director of the Youth Project at the justice center, major life pivot, but issues of education use, in particular the impact of trauma on education youth is something near and dear to my heart and integrating itself into my new work as well.
ANNE KELSEY: We'll move it along. So on top of things. Everything is like a video game. So the Young Center works with unaccompanied children in the immigration system. I'm on Team Policy, but our child advocates work directly with children who are in custody, and they represent the best interest of children, so it's kind of like a guardian ad litem role. They don't do immigration representation, but look at issues for the child's health and well being. So conditions of care, release to family or sponsors, services and supports, if there's a chance for or desire to return to home country. So that is the kind of continuum along which our child advocates work.
So, a child advocate works with unaccompanied children, and an unaccompanied child is a child under the age of 18 who has been apprehended, usually at the border, without a parent or a legal guardian. So that doesn't mean that they are necessarily alone. They are often traveling with, you know, family that is not a legal guardian. So, for example, an aunt or grandmother or sister. The child will be separated from that family if they are not a legal guardian or parent. As well as if they are traveling with a trafficker, of course, or if they are left alone, they will likewise be considered an unaccompanied child.
So they are apprehended at the border. They are processed by the Department of Homeland Security CBP. Then after hopefully only 72 hours the children are transferred to shelters operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is housed under the Department of Health and Human Services. So it is in theory a more child focused health and well being focused system than you would find like with ICE, detention, or adult custody and immigration. While they're in shelters, the ORR case managers, the grantee providers, which are nonprofits, child advocates and legal service providers will work to reunite the child with family or sponsors if possible, and if there is not a viable sponsor, look for some kind of long term foster care placement, again, if possible.
So this is a chart kind of describing some of the levels of restriction children experience in their shelters, but I'm going to skip to the next slide.
ANNE KELSEY: Yeah. So, there is a range of placements. Most kids will be in what is called "shelter," which can be anywhere from 15 to 1500 beds. So what you see on screen is a shelter that was formerly a Walmart. There's influx or emergency shelters, like oil rig camps in Texas, as well as smaller facilities. So just 200 by 1, but they really range and are kind of what they consider least restrictive as much as that 1,000 bed place can be.
The actual least restrictive is there are some home based foster care options and they're often prioritized for very young children or children who will be moving in and out quickly. There should be of those. On other end, this is where disability issues come in. Children who cannot or will not comply with what is a very regulated and rule based system.
Who show behaviors who act out a lot of which related to trauma experiences, mental health disabilities, anxiety, stress, will be moved into more restrictive settings, which include residential treatment centers, staff secure, hire staff to child based rules, and then secure facilities which is essentially a detention facility, although children don't have to adjudicated delinquent to be placed in one.
Last year 128,000 kids entered custody. 65 male, 35% female. The top countries of origin are the northern triangle countries in Central America, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. And the majority are 15 and over. So about 70% are older, but we do see very young children as well. And so the average length of stay is about 30 days
So for an older teenager who maybe is coming to reunite with family here who knows from his community how this process works, that three weeks will be fine, because, you know, he or she is understanding this process, but, you know, perhaps if they are not from one of the Northern Triangle countries, we see Afghan youth cross the border and children from Africa, East Africa primarily or other countries. They're very young. They have some sort of disability when some of these behaviors exist. Children can be in custody for months or even years. And so the rules in place really hit differently when you are talking about a child who has now been in custody for a year, a year and a half.
So as we talk through some of that, that is where some of the problems come in. The Young Center, we're primarily appointed to the most vulnerable children. So very young pregnant and parenting, children with disabilities, children who have experienced trafficking or violence along the way.
So, quickly, in theory, children will have the right to seek asylum, and many do have viable claims for asylum. Of course our system is not really set up for a child in any way. It's not child centered, and it certainly is not set up for a child to exert his or her rights through the system. So there's no right to counsel. The system is very adversarial, and with the things like the asylum ban and Title 42 and all of that, it becomes even more challenging to navigate the system. And we think family separation oftentimes, like what happened during the Trump administration, where they were physically separating kids from their families, but there are so many things that work in the system to separate kids from families.
So, for example, if a family is waiting in Mexico to wanting to come across, but the parents won't be allowed, they can't get an appointment, but there is clear and present danger in the Mexico camps, there is violence and kidnapping and poor conditions, they think, will my child be safe here or will they be safe if I send them over the border. Particularly there are children with disabilities who are not getting the care they need in the camps. You know, they could get that care maybe if they're sent across the border alone. So there's many things that lead to this family separation.
So some of the rules we were talking about regulations today, you know, the last presentation. And we don't even have regulations. We have a settlement agreement from 1997, which is kind of the floor on which we operate. So the Flores agreement, it's really the absolute basic prioritizes reunification. Children get adequate food, water, outdoor time, bed, you know, their own beds. You know, really very minimal work there. The TVPRA codified a little bit of Flores, but also increased surveillance of families and particularly names that children with disabilities under the ADA definition of a disability must have a home study, which can be very intrusive and not particularly useful.
So as we see in many judgments of families and kids with disabilities, they will go and say, well, this room is too crowded for you to have this child here, you can't meet this child's needs, and it doesn't look at how we support that family, but makes a lot of judgments about the family and their ability to care for their children. Section 504 applies, I think everybody knows that, although it doesn't always seem like ORR, which is the agency that we work with does, but... well, I won't digress into my rant right yet.
So some of the problems that we see is that the system doesn't recognize harm of institutional settings, which we know so well from disability work, and likewise separation from family and community. It sees the facilities as kind of a neutral, like, you know, we have to make sure that they are safe in families, and we want that too. And this is a place where kids will be okay while we make sure we can get them to family, but it doesn't really balance the harms of the trauma of a child while being in these institutional settings. There's a real lack of any individualized trauma informed disability related care, mental health care. They get one therapy appointment a week, and then some group therapy, but it's very
And something we really see, which will sound very familiar to those of you who well, you know, work in this field at all, but particularly in the school context, kids with disabilities are disproportionally punished for behavior that is related to those disabilities.
And then that leads into the cycle of increasing restriction, placement in restrictive settings, a record that is created and perception they are a bad kid or dangerous kid that can't be released to the community. So immigration is a disability justice issue. You know, I think everyone is here probably because they recognize that, but the Young Center and our colleagues fight for getting our kids disability related services while they're in custody, but also knowing that children should never be in institutional settings, and knowing they will thrive when they are with family and community.
So the real goal is to make sure kids can access what they need in the community, which, of course, in our 50 state, everything's different, the system is hard. When a kid is released to California, they have access to very different things if they're released to Alabama, for example. So there's a lot of interconnectedness, I think, to broader movements to expand Medicaid to all communities, regardless of their documentation status.
And to minimize family separation, ensure access to both legal counsel and child advocates, and then what we're doing today connecting disability immigration work.
AMY LEIPZIGER: If I can add something, it's funny you said, because there's something a colleague said six or search months ago, when they're released to like California, it depends on what happens when they land wherever they land, but what someone said to me that I hadn't thought through is it also depends on the starting point.
So the Doe case, which is brought by the Washington Lawyers' Committee against the Shenandoah Valley secure juvenile center. So it didn't bring the refugee settlement ORR as a party, just the actual provider, which is a secure facility located in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with documented history abuse of the children in its care.
So they lost the district, but the Fourth Circuit reversed about the standard for mental health care, but the good thing is the result of the litigation and just the hassle and the difficulty finding staff, Shenandoah just closed, so yay! Except ORR responded to that by putting out a notice of funding for five new secure facilities. So that was really frustrating, instead of using this as an opportunity to kind of rethink how it does the care of kids who need more services. It has chosen to really double down on the secure facilities... go ahead.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm not sure if this is a correct question to ask right now, or just maybe...But do you know what the strategy was or the decision making process was behind only naming...
ANNE KELSEY: So, yeah, I asked that question, but they have had so the case has been on so long they've had so much lawyer turnover, that the lawyers on the case now didn't know what the original strategy was. And they never had a lot of contact with ORR either, so it's a weird case, but, you know, it got Shenandoah closed, so I can't complain too much.
[chuckles]
That was like the first question I asked. They were like, we don't really know why that happened.
[ Laughter ]
Yeah, so we were doing a lot of advocacy right now to try and convince ORR to not turn towards the care facilities, because they like their notice of funding is like we really want providers who are trauma informed and can provide mental health care, but you also have to be licensed as a juvenile jail, and there's just... you know, there's no good way to jail a child. Like you can't do it the right way since I really want to. We're working on that issue quite a bit now. Another interesting case: Disability Rights California, the Disability and PNA in California brought a habeas case in the fall for an Afghan child who was going to be stepped up from a foster care setting to a locked psychiatric unit in Utah without appropriate due process or assessment, and bringing a bunch of different claims.
They prevented that step up, but the case was moved again, and the case is under seal, so I don't know the current status, but we were really excited to have a PNA be involved, particularly with the Afghan youth I mentioned, there's about 40 kids left in care who have been there you know, a year and a half now, have experienced, you know, just a real lack of culturally competent care, you know, lack of language access, a lack of cultural access, a lack of religious understanding, and who have just experienced just ongoing trauma and in some cases real decompensation and serious mental health problems resulting from that. And it doesn't really seem like anyone at ORR has a good solution to get these kids into community settings.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think that's actually one of the big challenges, is there is a lack of foster care.
ANNE KELSEY: Uh huh.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: So, yeah, like these kids stay there because there is no place to go.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: They need foster families.
AMY LEIPZIGER: If I can add, the problem is, I think some folks, when talking about cultural competent care, people with disabilities, sometimes a career or parent or foster parent with a disability would be very useful, but these systems often will lead out and deny foster approval. And these programs, even like the regular sort of state based programs prohibit that. Specifically because the intended foster family wanted the one of the parents, one of the adults has a disability. And so, like, I think there are lots of people who would want to do it, who specifically some of the requirements would hinder them from being able to do it. So that's another sort of big problem. It's stereotypes, but they're in all kinds of places, both with the kids and potential foster parents or adults in those systems.
ANNE KELSEY: Yeah. In my understanding, there are more hoops to jump through to be a URM ORR foster care provider that a state foster care provider I don't know if you found that to be true
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It took us over a year.
AMY LEIPZIGER: So there are state laws that prohibit discrimination in approving foster parent status and child custody in general, but because these are federal programs, the state they don't have to adhere to the state laws. So that is why they are able to apply a discriminatory... well, that's why they have been able to get away with a discriminatory process, whereas general foster process has been cleaned up in many states.
ANNE KELSEY: Yeah, it's sad, and we in this ORR system are like, look at the foster care system, they're doing all these things better, and we know the foster care system is not doing a lot of things, but it's all relative when we're like, the foster care system prioritizes family unity and keeping families and kids with kin, and our system doesn't.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can I ask a question?
ANNE KELSEY: Absolutely.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Going back to the decision on what is a legal guardian. And so how is that determination made at the border if somebody isn't a legal guardian? Are they expecting that the individuals who are not direct, you know, parents would have documentation from the country they are fleeing that designates them as a legal guardian?
ANNE KELSEY: Absolutely.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's kind of ridiculous.
ANNE KELSEY: Exactly. It's exactly that. It depends on the processing officer, how, you know, they treat the paperwork and what they expect. But, yes, they are expecting some sort of legal documentation, you know, something that looks like an American guardianship order or American, you know, form. Which even in countries where they might have that form, it might look different, and even those kind of forms have been turned away. But, yes, they are looking for some kind of formal document. The country of which you are fleeing has to provide some acceptable documentation. If they were able to access something like that, they wouldn't have they may not have left, if they were able to interact with the government of that country in a way that wasn't harmful or scary.
ANNE KELSEY: That's often what I think. All right, so I'm going to skip the section on SIRs. This is what I was talking about, punishment of behavior that is often related to disability and is not understood that way. You know, it doesn't trigger assessment or additional support. \It triggers punishment, and this record that can affect a child's immigration case. It can affect where the child is placed and where the child is released to family or sponsor. But I want to get into our education deep dive. So I will move us along to education.
AMY LEIPZIGER: Actually go to that one, because it leads nicely to mine. I don't want to short change you... (laughing)
ANNE KELSEY: As I was saying, kids with disabilities are often the ones in restrictive placements, an so when talking about secure facilities, for example, ORR has said to us, well, we need a place to put the kid with the homicide conviction, and, okay first of all, even a youth with that kind of conviction can be placed in less restrictive setting. It needs to be individualized in support. There could be a lot of reasons for that kind of conviction and it's not enough just to say put them in a jail.
But second of all, that is not how the system is used. It's used to house kids that no other providers want. And providers of less restrictive placements will blatantly discriminate against kids with disabilities saying we won't take that kid, we can't serve him, and that's kind of allowed in the system right now. So, you know, the things we would like to see are kids out of custody, but kind of the, you know, crisis intervention, de-escalation, trauma informed care, all of those things instead of a direct turn to this punishment system.
AMY LEIPZIGER: What is funny to me is that it oddly mirrors what happens at education systems, so I was practicing in education for nine years in the New York City Department of Education suing the New York City Department of Education on a regular basis, and one of my last clients before I transitioned was one where I was thinking a lot about crisis intervention, trauma informed, because the administration had like a hair trigger, any time he would step even what they thought was out of line, it was like, let's discipline him, let's suspend him, to the point where the school officials were saying, we don't want him in our school anymore.
And they were pushing to expel him and get arrested and threatening with trespassing, but there was nowhere for him to go because of the nature of his disability and the history of trauma he had made that the only place accessible to him. So it's interesting to me how the institutions not in a good way mirror each other, and what happened is custody happens in schools across the country, not just in New York City, in school system where we heard about the school to prison pipeline and school to deportation pipeline, but it's that lack of trauma and lack of how to deescalate a young person in whatever crisis they're in, needs a supportive environment, not a or let's not
AMY LEIPZIGER: So I jumped ahead to what happens when out of custody, because that's in the back of my mind.
ANNE KELSEY: ORR providers will absolutely call the police on kids rather than deescalate or provide care and then refuse to take them back in custody.
AMY LEIPZIGER: It leaves them literally with no place to go.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And the diagnosis, like if they're coming in and... is it they're perceived as having a disability?
AMY LEIPZIGER: That actually dove tails into what I'm going to skip over basically the first slide is within 72 hours of admission, they're supposed to administer some sort of series of educational assessments. It's very barebones. It's basically what would be like can you read, can you write, do you understand math? It is not used to assess disabilities, assess trauma history. For those that do any education work, doing a psych educational assessment where you're basically giving them like a WISC or a standardized test, like what do you know, not let's see if we can look at do you have underlying conditions that would interfere with your ability to be in a safe, supportive environment. That's the first thing that happens in 72 hours. But it's so miniscule and so, like, the floor, not the ceiling, that a lot of youth who have experience with trauma, who have disabilities that may or may not have been diagnosed are not going to have any sort of record of what their experiences are in those first 72 hours.
So once the assessment is done, the children are placed into six hours of instruction per day Monday through Friday. What is interesting about this, and I'm going to reference something. You have to factor in, it's a factory like setting. It's not as if, okay, the ten year olds, we're going to put you in a class together, and all the seven year olds or 15 year olds, we're going to put you in a class together, we're just going to shove you in a class and don't care what you know or what language you speak, we're going to teach everything and the curriculum is very generic that they repeat over and over again. And for youth that have been in facilities for a long time, they will say after the first 30 days, it's like watching a movie on repeat. It just starts all over again, because it's not developing curriculum base on their needs. It's not trying to enhance their education. It's what is showing that we comply with the law. So basic teaching in subject areas is what they get.
I know this because we tried to do a foil that made me nuts. One of the biggest challenges because HHS will contract with providers like Cayuga, companies like the black hole of providers. We don't know what educational services are happening in the shelters. We don't know are they contracting. In New York City we were talking to folks and we know that some New York City schoolteachers were brought in. But when we tried to reach out to the New York State Education Department to say, okay, great, what kind of training are you giving these teachers, New York State Education said we're not doing anything, we're not providing any training or certifying anybody.
The State is saying we're not doing anything, the City is saying we're not doing anything, but somehow teachers are going into facilities to provide education but we don't know what the teachers are, what kind of training or supports they received. And a lot of them don't speak the language, just thinking about Spanish, but those going back to what you're talking about, coming from other countries, Afghan, probably don't have the ability to communicate. They have a youth that is going through all of the trauma of coming into the country, is in whatever facility they're in, doesn't speak the language, may or may not be dealing with a disability, is working through their trauma and is now hampered with this added layer of an inability to communicate.
INAUDIBLE AUDIENCE MEMBER QUESTION
AMY LEIPZIGER: It's a good question. I think it goes back to 504 accommodations.
ANNE KELSEY: Yeah, so generally they will in their initial, like, health screening, like a very basic health screening, will notice kind of obvious disabilities usually, I say with a caveat, because we see in some cases we had a case with a child who had a cochlear implant but had lost his ear piece, but nobody noticed for like four months in custody before like someone just happened to ask, oh, what is that scar you have? So there should be basic screening for disability related issues, but it's not it's very like one off. There's no systematic way of dealing with that. You know, those kids might be priority for release, depending if they can, or the smaller setting if possible, but it's very ad hoc, depending on who is doing the assessment they're doing.
AMY LEIPZIGER: Going back to the broader question of disabilities, some clients were assessed with having mental health issues. And what was interesting is they contracted again with a provider to come into the shelter to do the assessment, had a report written up, the report was included in the use ORR file, and then when discharged to the person, the file was given to the family member but it wasn't explained to the family member what was in the file. So when this person and I'll talk a little about what happens when you're out of custody then tried to enroll in school, there was a neuropsychological assessment that talked about his mental health issues and trauma and learning disability that nobody knew was in there. And because and this cuts both ways. Because school districts can't ask about immigration status, which I'm all for, I don't want them asking about it, but the problem then is frequently they get youth enrolling in schools not aware that maybe if they are lucky that shelter had done assessments that could be useful in helping to place the child. So it is an odd double edged sword.
ANNE KELSEY: Can I interrupt?
AMY LEIPZIGER: Go for it
ANNE KELSEY: We generally see psychological assessments done basically with the goal of getting the child stepped up. Like the child might be in a shelter and there's behavior issues and the shelter is like, well, we don't want him here, and so then they get a friendly provider in to do an assessment that says, this child needs more and more restrictive setting with more support and psychotropic medications. So it's not done with an eye towards, you know, a strength based assessment of what supports the child needs. It's like, how do we get this child out of here? And so even the assessments that happen, we are often very skeptical about the quality.
AMY LEIPZIGER: And I think there's a larger conversation about this misdiagnosis of what is not actually any type of disability or mental illness or cultural competency but the lack of understanding about trauma. Which goes into my next slide. Because I think COVID has had a lot to do with moving the needle a little bit, recognizing adverse childhood experiences are just what everybody calls PTSD, but recognizing for youth that experience systemic trauma, poverty, lack of access to food, exposure to war, exposure to violence, sexual violence, that persistent exposure over time creates a post traumatic effect.
There's adverse childhood experiences that actually impact the brain's development. And this is the part that I'm not a scientist I find fascinating they've done studies on how especially for really, really young children exposed to significant trauma as youth, their brain again, I'm totally going to botch the science was rewired to deal with that trauma. And so what is happening later in life is that what folks are like, oh, you have ADHD or a learning disability, no, it wasn't those things. It was a trauma that was I'm totally butchering the science nobody quote me on this. But it's fascinating to me the trauma has such an indelible impact for youth. I was working with six or seven year olds that experienced significant violence in the home and significant serious abuse and later were manifesting oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit disorder. Those things were mirroring the underlying trauma that happened to him as a child.
So immigrant used I think alludes to this, particularly those unaccompanied have exposures to types of stressors. Academy pediatrics recognized that stress of immigration detention even for 30 days we were talking about can have significant impact on both children and young adults and those students with trauma related learning challenges that are in the 30 day session getting education might have a hard time understanding the material. Might be disengaged from learning. Might feel like this isn't the right environment for them and might engage in behavior that is interfering with their ability to learn and it's disruptive to the classroom. I think this goes back to what you're saying. So then the response is very punitive. Not let me see if I can understand why you're freaking out in these classes, we're trying to teach math you don't understand, instead we're going to throw you a bunch of meds and see if we can get you in a more restrictive environment.
So the other thing, and I think you alluded to this also, the current system doesn't mention sort of what do when a child presents with a more nuanced disability, if a child does have dyslexia or legitimately have ADHD or intellectual impairment. If there's no, like, proper sort of set up or structure for what to do in that circumstance, and I think very often they punt.
ANNE KELSEY: They scramble.
AMY LEIPZIGER: We're not going to deal with it and, look, there you go, now they're gone. So education issues out of custody. So Supreme Court said that undocumented children cannot be denied a free and public education if they are district residents. So this goes back to my earlier point. In New York City when you enroll in the family welcome center, which is the enrollment center, immigration not immigration, that was a slip the staff at the family welcome center are not allowed to ask about immigration status or your family's immigration status. This has come up a lot especially for us in the last year. So as we have seen as of last October 5,000 new students enrolled in DME from the most recent immigration surge and we had concerns and questions about what was happening at the local centers and were students admitted and placed in appropriate settings
One of the big challenges we have been seeing is a challenge of language access. So, again, even before this most recent surge, New York City had a very, very large population of students that should have been identified as English language learners, should have been receiving bilingual language support, and haven't been in part because, again, even before the last year or so, there's more students and more need than the DOE ever really recognized, and even though the New York State Education Department said we're going to pad advisory, here's what you do, here's supports, multi language supports, here's the steps you're supposed to take. It's not happening on the ground. So I had a lot of clients, some with IEPs and some without that would be model language students speaking little to no English and placed in all English settings. And why are you doing this? The AP would say she needs speech, OT, PT, she needs ABA therapy. We're going to put everything in English. Great, she's not going to understand anything that is happening, you ear going to claim that you're doing what you need to.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I actually worked with a Texas center and we were contacted by I'm forgetting the name, but they had a young man who came into the country and he was deaf. And I'm wondering if you all come across this too, but he had never been taught really any way to communicate, so he didn't know English. He didn't know Spanish. He didn't know ASL. He just had what they call home signs or pigeon signs, and they were calling us kind of desperately, what do we do, how do we communicate with this person, and what recommendations do you have for us to be able to communicate with him?
So I was wondering if you all had seen that too?
AMY LEIPZIGER: I have seen a different version of that. I want to say DOE, New York City prides itself that it translates everything into the nine languages. I was involved in some of the language access litigation. On the website, on the materials, they do the top nine languages, the ones you can imagine. But what is interesting is for a lot of immigrants over the last couple years, those that speak dialects that may not speak Spanish but a really I'm terrible remembering the names of the dialects off the top of my head, but and I had a couple clients that were coming in, some living in the Bronx and some were in Queens, where they didn't speak any of the covered languages, so the challenge was how do you place a child in school who has no ability to communicate, and the DOE is not equipped to do it. It wasn't before, even less now under the current administration. I mean, for us the language crisis has gotten so bad they were shipping teachers over supposedly from Puerto Rico and putting them in the Bronx, but then there was an outcry because teachers weren't being housed appropriately and threatened with deportation. It was a huge, fabulous thing happening in New York City for us in the fall.
[chuckles]
We, Mayor Adams is a treat. He's something special.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Individuals are coming over here and usually their countries of origin, what they experienced there, it's not like they have a very strong foundation of education, so in their own language, it would be very different, very rudimentary. So whatever is being translated is not going to speak to them in any meaningful way.
AMY LEIPZIGER: There was a great lawsuit out of Minnesota years ago, and I can't remember the name right now, but I can find it if you're interested. I want to say it was a class action. He settled it with a minority group that was based in Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, they were having similar issues in terms of cultural competency and language communication. And the settlement actually was really, really well written and recognize those pieces. But that was because they had the wherewithal and there was a bill enough group they were able to combine together and combine the resources. That's different than talk act one or two people, especially in immediate need, they don't care about litigation. They just want the kid in a classroom where they understand what is going on.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Like contact interpreters, and there was like they needed three different interpreters to interpret, you know, one person to interpret, you know, from what he was doing, home signs, to like Spanish, to then English, to like
ANNE KELSEY: Yeah, but there is these are not like super common cases, but they happen, and you ideally have a sort of plan in place of how you go about that so you're not scrambling. And we have seen a couple cases like that. Often there's like a sibling group, so like one sibling will be hearing and able to communicate for the other sibling, but then like they will separate the siblings, which is just like why are you doing that? Or, you know, a young person was traveling with a group of not family members, but a group of folks who spoke the Venezuelan sign language dialect, but she was separated from them. And those cases we also just really fight for reunification with family or community that might speak that particular sign, and even if that is like you need to video relay with a family member who is in home country who can communicate with the sign, but, yeah, just you just really feel for the isolation of that child who can't communicate.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: If it's scary for children who can at some degree... I just can't even imagine.
AMY LEIPZIGER: The other issue, I think
ANNE KELSEY: Actually relates to what you were just referring to, which was schooling.
AMY LEIPZIGER: Students with interrupted education, a lot of at youth, 16, 17, 18, whatever reason their formal education stopped at a much younger age. I've had clients, 16 or 17 year old who stopped going to school in first or second grade comes over to get enrolled and immediately gets placed into high school curriculum. Then you're faced with the situation, well, you're not going to place a 17 year old with a second grade class with my seven year old kid but you also can't put them in an academic curriculum where they're not going to understand the language, but the material is going to be so beyond what they can do. Most offices, state education offices have created again, referencing New York, but I know that Massachusetts had, Illinois had, I'm pretty sure California did also, advisories from the state education department with what you do. And it ties to English language learners and recognizing students with formal education have unique needs. And what is frustrating, more often than not, rather than deal with the students who have issues with language access and the older students who have a gap in education, the enrollment officers are just pushing them out and say don't come in.
They have barriers to enrollment where we have had numerous reports coming in saying, you know, the 19 year old still allowed to go to school until the age of 21 in New York goes to family welcome center and says go get a GED or you're too old, or there's no school for you. So what we were talking about this morning is what is really frustrating is not only at this point youth are many, but not all, many are looking for the sense of stability and structure that comes from being in a school. It's not do a GED on your own. You want the sense of community, you know, in a building with people, with peers, teachers and adult support. Partly for the learning. A big part of it is for social/emotional support and also for if development of language access. Because if you are recently immigrated and you are an English language learner, the absolute best way you are going to pick up English in a much faster way is if every day you are subjected to it for seven hours a day around your peers.
ANNE KELSEY: I like "subjected to it."
AMY LEIPZIGER: Force it. Yeah, the ORR file has come up for us. So immigrant students are entitled to special education services just like other students. Again, this goes to the issues of cultural competency. We want to make sure immigrant students are not mistaking or identified having a disability in fact they don't. That being said, there's recent case that is fabulous that came out of California talking about the impact of trauma on special education. Not so much from IDEA, the individuals with disabilities with education act but for the purposes of 504. And one of the many reasons for that when you look at the impact of adverse childhood experiences and trauma and you think about the supports that a youth might need in classroom setting, you don't want to categorize as having a disability under IDEA, but you recognize for a period of time they might need additional supports and services. The Compton case was fantastic. We have a hypothetical.
ANNE KELSEY: We have three minutes.
AMY LEIPZIGER: A hypothetical and...
INAUDIBLE AUDIENCE MEMBER QUESTION
AMY LEIPZIGER: I think there are I think you're going to get different estimates across the board. And I honestly think there's no real reliable barometer, because... having a disability, you have to start by asking the basic question, what are with we talking about? And what is that recognized as? And is there exposure to trauma and this is the content case, and recognizes having PTSD, which should entitle you to additional supports, but does that mean you have a disability? No does that mean you have a condition that requires support? Yes. But I think nationally if you say this, it's not going to be reliable. You see six different studies that tell you six different numbers. It's funny, in my new role never mind.
It's funny, because we're looking at how many homeless youth are in New York City right now and I keep looking at studies and they have vastly different numbers, because you can't categorize something that nebulous. Everything is in flux. You can say this number and that number, and I think when looking to youth in disabilities you're running into very much the same thing.
INAUDIBLE AUDIENCE MEMBER QUESTION
ANNE KELSEY: And that goes to like our social safety net and how it excludes undocumented folks in many ways. So, for example, California you know, they don't look at documentation status. So, yes, unaccompanied child released to the community can be connected to vocational services. But in other states, the documentation status will absolutely be a bar. And many of our kids, you know, will eventually get some legal lawful status. There's different options for kids. But the time that takes and the language access barriers and just, you know, all the barriers to that, I think it's... it's so needed but so rare.
AMY LEIPZIGER: And I think also depending on the age, if you're struggling between asylum and you want to get a green card, unless under the color of law, do you want to risk the cross hairs or think maybe it creates a precarious situation.
ANNE KELSEY: Yeah.
AMY LEIPZIGER: All right, who wants to do this really fast? This is based on a client of mine, 15 year old immigrant student recently from El Salvador placed with aunt after leaving custody and enrolled in local school district. Used personal history, gap in formal education, documented experience sexual violence and indications of learning disability but never assessed in custody. What source of services should they have been entitled to? I don't know what the second line is, but...
[ Laughter ]
ANNE KELSEY: How would you advocate?
[ Laughter ]
INAUDIBLE AUDIENCE MEMBER QUESTION
AMY LEIPZIGER: Also in a language that is understood as well.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Bias. All of that. There is a lot of moving pieces to an assessment like that. But absolutely an assessment should be done. It's just finding a person who can navigate all of those different pieces and put together a true picture of what the student is capable of doing and whether it's truly a disability or
AMY LEIPZIGER: And the piece of that is missing, the part I didn't mention in this, actually a girl, she enrolled in a local school district but they didn't have records of what happened in ORR, so the question became how long was it until the school district noticed it was enough of an issue to notify her aunt under child find and then sorry, those who aren't familiar sorry, it's the school obligations to okay, the term is used loosely, but basically assess and evaluate someone suspect offhand having a disability. They are mandated under IDEA if they suspect youth with a disability to recommend assessments and evaluations.
ANNE KELSEY: We would like to see that in ORR as well, when kids are there for a longer period.
AMY LEIPZIGER: There's a lot of great things.
ANNE KELSEY: Understandably, but if the child is there a year, you have some time.
AMY LEIPZIGER: One of the many things a lot of things I don't like about the IDEA, but one of the things I found useful is if the child does hang a hook around the school district to say, no, you didn't know what was going on, you had a legal obligation to do this and make a legal recommendation.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: A little off the topic, in reference to what you were talking about in the effective trauma in learning and effects on the brain and all of that, I have spent the last two years working with one of the largest school districts in Houston at the primary level, and when I saw what I saw is as students came back from isolation over COVID, a huge hike in autism identification. And my question I asked over and over again, is this truly autism? Is this a lack of exposure to communication with other people? Has this child been sitting in a room for the last two years, you know, a huge part of autism is communication. And so I see that a lot as well as trauma responses being diagnosed as autism.
AMY LEIPZIGER: I was working with a Chinese group, doing a lot of work in the Asian community in fleshing and folks would reach out to us trying to enroll young Chinese families and kids in early intervention and were facing resistance, going back to language and cultural barriers. So as a result, because they weren't getting early intervention they needed at two and three, by the time they were enrolled in kindergarten at five, that gap had built up over COVID of we're not going to enroll you, you have a language barrier, we don't understand, we don't have room, we can't communicate with you and the parents can't communicate with you, so the children spent the two or three really critical developmental years losing out on fundamental skills.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And the sad thing about it is the IDEA, specific criteria for identification, and in a vicious cycle. We can't do it because of this law and you can't do it for this law, and there is a child without supports trying to stay applicant and not necessarily supportive.
AMY LEIPZIGER: If you imagine the two or three year old who can't communicate and then starts acting ow. This goes back to what you're saying. And you're assess, you're just acing out, wear going to punish you more. And any of you I have two children, I can speak to the fact that two and three year old, it doesn't feel like they're being understood. It's incredibly frustrating, and why don't you and I don't you know, blah, blah, blah...
ANNE KELSEY: I say the same thing for teenagers.
[ Laughter ]
ANNE KELSEY: I'm like, do you remember what being a teenager was like? Of course this child is acting out. They're stuck, they're hearing horrible news from their home country, they have no, like, vision for their future. You keep telling them they're bad kid. Of course.
AMY LEIPZIGER: And it's often and I speak my son is on the spectrum and I speak from experience that during the pandemic, frequently because he would be having meltdowns. I was like he was just tired. It was like the most basic human need of like an inability to explain that, and it was like, like shoving food and being like, eat something, eat something... and all of a sudden it was like... oh, my God, I feel so much better, thank you, Mom.
But it is...
ANNE KELSEY: We're happy to stay around if you want to chat, but also we don't want to keep you from your breaks. Thank you guys all so much.