How the court system is dealing with the increased number of migrant children

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Podcasts Take Two

Jul 25, 2014

Listen • 6:19

How the court system is dealing with the increased number of migrant children

A couple of times a week, on the high floors of a bank building near Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, immigration judges hear the cases of migrant children.

Salvadorian immigrant Stefany Marjorie, 8, watches as a U.S. Border Patrol agent records family information on July 24, 2014 in Mission, Texas. Like most of the recent surge of Central American immigrant women and children, her family brought documents, often birth certificates, to prove their nationality to U.S. Border officials. Tens of thousands of immigrant families and unaccompanied minors from Central America have crossed illegally into the United States this year and presented themselves to federal agents, causing a humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. Texas' Rio Grande Valley has become the epicenter of the latest immigrant crisis, as more of them enter illegally from Mexico into that sector than any other stretch of the America's 1,933 mile border with Mexico.

A couple of times a week, on the high floors of a bank building near Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, immigration judges hear the cases of migrant children.

The local juvenile immigration court docket has expanded lately as more Central American minors arrive in L.A., many reunited with family here while their cases are pending.

KPCC’s Leslie Berestein Rojas was in the courtroom this week and joins Take Two to explain how the children’s docket works and how the arrival of more kids affects the immigration court system.