O’Malley to White House: No Unaccompanied Minors in My Backyard

After his strong criticism of the Obama administration’s plans to return thousands of young undocumented migrants back to Central America, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley asked a top White House official that the children not be sent to a site that was under consideration in his home state, sources familiar with the conversation said.
“He privately said ‘please don’t send these kids to Western Maryland,'” a Democratic source told CNN. The heated discussion between O’Malley and White House domestic policy adviser Cecilia Munoz occurred during a phone call late Friday evening, sources familiar with the conversation added.

Coughlin’s school allows students learning English to stay into their 20s. In the past two years, it has seen increased numbers of students who crossed the border alone. He says many work long hours at night in restaurants or cleaning to pay for immigration attorneys or, in at least one case, to pay back a relative who spent thousands of dollars to have them smuggled into the country.
The language barrier proved to be a big obstacle for Ronald Pojoy, who came alone from Guatemala in 2007 when he was 15 to join his mother….
Now 21, Pojoy received his diploma last month from Liberty High School in southwest Houston. The school serves a large number of immigrants and offers information about legal and other community services.

In Miami, the school board voted to seek federal aid after Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said 300 foreign-born students, many from Honduras and traveling alone, enrolled toward the end of the school year. He said the district has both a “moral and legal requirement” to educate the students, some illiterate in both English and Spanish. The cost is about $1,950 more per student than it gets from the state, he said.
“They need to be fed. They need to be clothed. They need to be cared for and then taught,” Carvalho said.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder issued new guidance in May reminding districts that a 1982 Supreme Court ruling gives all children the right to enroll in school, regardless of immigration status.

One of Coughlin’s students, Milsa Martinez, 20, says she was 18 when her parents sent for her in El Salvador, after her grandmother died, 14 years after her parents had moved to the U.S….
Martinez was treated as a minor when detained because, she said, she looked young.

…Children in custody are younger than ever before, with 24 percent under the age of 14 in 2013, up from 17 percent in 2012, according to ORR. The average age of Central American youth is 14, with a recent upswing in the number of young girls, who now make up 27 percent of the total. The government estimates that new arrivals will reach 60,000 in 2014 and balloon to 130,000 in 2015.