Trust is everything to me. Thats why for all we have accomplished in state gos government, our job is not done until we clean up the corruption. So im appointing a new independent commissioner led by top officials from all across the great state to investigate and prosecute wrong doing. Politicians in albany wont like it, but i work with the people and i wont stop fighting until we all have a government we can trust. Andrew cuomo is spending millions of our tax on ads that are not true. Guess what state ranks dead last in Economic Outlook . Cuomos new york. Has the highest property taxes in the nation, cuomos new york. Andrew cuomos policies have new york last in too many categories, and no amount of taxpayer ads could change that. New york has a proud history of fighting for the nation. Its shocking rob astorino has violated Discrimination Laws for years. Hes the only county executive who refuses to comply. 10 million in penalties for civil rights violations. The New York Times on astor o astorino. It wont work now. So far right hes wrong for new york. Recent polls shows this race as solid democrat. You can watch the candidates debate any time online on cspan. Org. Next, remarks from the salvadoran ambassador to the u. S. On the recent migration of unaccompanied minors from Central America. His comments came during an allday conference on immigration policy held by the Georgetown University law center. Its an hour and a half. Okay, i think were going to get started. Welcome back from lunch. I know it was a little shorter perhaps than you like. But he had fascinating panels this morning. In addition to director rodriguez speaking, we started out really well, so the challenge for my panel will be to continue that. I know that theyre very capable of doing that. To this panel were going to focus in particular with the treatment of unaccompanied minors in the United States as well as the situation for them and their sending country both before they leave and if they are returned what sort of plans exist at least in one of the major sending countries. I just want to make say a couple words before i introduce our panelist, each of whom will talk for about 10, 15 minutes then well open it up to a full q a. Once again when we get to q a, please come down to the microphones and introduce yourselves. This, we know that the unaccompanied minors from three Central American country, salvador, guatemala and honduras, have been coming to the United States for quite some time and that in recent years the numbers started to increase, and they increased first gradually and then somewhat significantly one could say. But this year they were called a crisis. I just want to remind us in the global context of crises, the arrival of this number of unaccompanied children, whether it was 60,000 people were talking about, 90,000 or whatever, that is not the definition of a crisis in the global community. A crisis is what is happening in syria and a crisis is what happens every time theres huge movements of forced migrants who have to flee for safety reasons. Now, what the children have in common with many of those is that theres no question that the violence in their communities was one of the major factors in their flight. Thats not something thats really been debated. Many, weve learned, who are also coming to join families. Were going to have a full discussion, though, of whats happened since they came here. Weve also learned very recently in these past year or two that more of them were younger and were more female, so larger percentages of younger children and more girls, ask yourselves why. So to talk about whats going on in the sending country in terms of trying to ensure that kids dont have to flee violence and in terms of their returns if and when that takes place, we have the ambassador of el salvador the United States, hes next to my right, and to talk about the Just DepartmentImmigration Courts in particular are handling the increased numbers of children in a variety of ways we have barbara leen who is the counsel to the director of the executive office of immigration review directly to the ambassadors right and to barbaras right we have maria woltshin who is not only a professor at the university of chicago where shes a teaches a variety of courses on immigrationrelated issues but shes the director of the young center for immigration childrens rights who has been working to develop a significant core of child advocates. So for lawyers in the room, heres a different role that lawyers can play in the process when children arrive from abroad in a country. So i would ask maria to talk about what her, her organization, the young center does, how the most recent increases in numbers have affected the organization and particularly about the concept of best interests of the child and how that is being deployed and some of the challenges with that. So were going to begin with ambassador altshoal. Youll see some will sit, some will stand. Ive invited them to do whatever is most comfortable. Well begin with you, ambassador. Thank you very much. First, let me thank the organizers of this event for giving me the opportunity of sharing this panel with such distinguished persons and with you all as was said by andrew, immigration is not true, even the immigration of unaccompanied children is not necessarily new. Just in the case of el salvador in 2009 theres records of 1200 unaccompanied children coming here to the United States. In fiscal year 2012, this increased to 3300. And fiscal year 2004, which is referred to as the crisis, we had 16,000. Unaccompanied kids. So it is new, but it has increased and has increased considerably. So one question is why. As im sure you all know, the issue of migration, theres not one single cause. There are multiple causes or push factors that have to do with migration. And all of them exist right now. In the case of el salvador, in the case of the northern triangle countries. It is always mention that economic reasons are a fundamental cause, and it is true. I mean, people migrate because they cannot find the opportunities in our own countries to satisfy their most basic human needs, lack of jobs, lack of opportunities, health opportunities, Education Opportunities and so forth. So thats always been a push factor. And a cause for migration. But things havent gotten worse in el salvador, so that is not in itself an explanation of why this surge in unaccompanied children. The same could be said about the security issues. It is true. I mean, there is we are all living in a very violent situation. The crime rate, et cetera, the Gang Violence and so forth clearly are push factors. Actually, right now honduras is considered to be the most violent country in the world and in san pedro its considered the most violent capital in the world. This is a questionable membership that san salvador and el salvador had three years ago. But so this is going on. Its true. They are push factors. But in the case of el salvador, at least, things havent gotten worse. They even have improved. So that by itself doesnt explain either this surge. Another important factor was mentioned already is the family reunification. Again, talking about el salvador, we have thousands of salvadorans, just a pps ben fisheries. We have those who have been living here, working here for at least 12 years, probably more. They left the country. They probably left their Young Children there. You havent seen them in tens of years. So now they have the means, they have the stability. They say this is the moment for me and i can pay for somebody to bring my kids back. So that is also a factor in all this. But again that itself does not explain the situation. What is it that has changed in my perception, which explains this, its basically i think, an issue of the smugglers, the coyotes. The coyotes had discovered if they send a message that if the kids come to the states and they came in, they were not going to be deported. We know they were telling people a green card, they might be given citizenship. So this is something that was a marketing strategy, a very successful marketing strategy. I think that explains why. Because what we see i had the opportunity to visit the border three or four weeks ago. We were in a Detention Center and i had the opportunity to talk to mothers there and the kids. And we asked how long did the trip take . Well, 10 days, 12 days, 15 days. We know traditionally this journey took two months, three months. And how did you travel . Well, we took a bus. So clearly this is not the normal process of immigration that we have been used to for all this time. This is a new way. Actually, it is referred to as the vip treatment or the express treatment. We know that people pay 8,000, 12,000 to bring people in. This has become a big, big business. I think this is what explains without taking any relevance or importance to the other push factors but this is what explain the surge. Now, i think its important to also see that in these three issues, the Economic Situation we are facing the security situation were facing and the issue of family reunification, but thats a shared responsibility with the United States because if we are now seeing the effects of economic policies that have been coming for many years that create the marginalized population and excluded great numbers of our people, this was in part also the responsibility of the u. S. Police ya at those times supporting military dictators in Central America and authoritarian regimes and supporting the ruling parties that created this situation. In the case of security, there is also some sort of shared responsibility because the majority of the violence that were having in our countries has to do with Drug Trafficking. And we are, unfortunately, in a very important geodwraskal situation because the drugs are produced in the south, theyre consumed in the north and they have to come through our countries. So its basically by geographical reasons that we are suffering a lot of this. And in terms of the family reunifications, i would say as well theres some shared responsibility because many of the policies, migration policies that you very well know have prevented and at least has not facilitated this family reunification process. So i say this not because i want to blame anybody, but to say the solution to the problems are still a matter of mutual cooperation and shared responsibility. And what is the solution . There are shortterm responses to this crisis. We have reinforced our consular offices in the border states, we have opened a new consulate general in texas, weve increased our cooperation with i. C. E. And with the u. S. Authorities. We have improved our capabilities in el salvador. Were organizing networks of support at the local level throughout our consulates to provide support for the kids that are going to eventually stay here or while they are still here, Legal Assistance in education, in medical health, Mental Health is very important. And so forth. But we are very clear that is longterm and the solution has to be in providing Economic Development and better conditions of life for the people. That is our main responsibility but again its an opportunity for joint and shared cooperation. At this moment, you might remember that a couple of weeks ago the three Central American president s from guatemala, san salvador and honduras were here in washington and had a meeting with president obama to analyze the situation of the kids. And one of the things that came out there was that countries would prepare with the help of the american interdevelopment bank a plan to address the situation. This plan has already been its already been in the works. Its still a road map, but i think it has very important innovations. One, it is prepared by the countries. It is not, as other plans, Economic Development plans that were basically elaborated here or through the multilateral institutions. This is something thats been the work of our thee governments working together, which is very important. Its not very easy that three countries come together and come with a plan. Second, the idea is not to do a Big Development plan, but to focus on the specific territories which produce the largest number of migrants. So its to implement concrete projects in those territories to provide better security, better job opportunities, better education, Better Health care in order to create the conditions that would, if not prevent, at least mitigate the migration. That is what we are we know very well that we believe that that is the way to go. We can do shortterm solutions but unless we address the root cause of migration, which is providing better conditions, security, economic and opportunities of life, we will not be able to stop that phenomenon. So i would like to leave it here and gladly answer questions. Thank you very much, ambassador. Ill ask each of our panelists to speak first, then well be opening it up to questions. So, barbara. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me here this afternoon. As many of you know the Immigration Court system and the Immigration Court of appeals, after the kids came through this summer, you know, there was a lot of focus on their immediate care, immediate feeding and shelter our agency focused a little bit more on what the longterm way to process these children are because after they go through the border and where theyre temporarily and reunified, they come to us for their Legal Proceedings. And so the children are typically with us for quite a bit of time with respect to their Legal Proceedings and how theyre processed through the system. So im going to talk a little bit about some of the changes that happened at our agency with respect to processing some of the kids, then ill speak to representation and a bit about some of our next steps. So many of you know one of the things we did in response to the influx this summer was that we added additional groups to our preexisting party for detained cases. So what that meant was that we were prioritizing the cases of recent border crossers, which was loosely defined sort of as people who came on or after may 1st. Dhs identifies who those people are, and typically its four different categories. Its unaccompanied children, adults with children who are detained, adults with children at least into the alternatives for Detention Program and all other detained aliens. And so those are sort of used the recent border crosser priority caseload. Im going to focus today on the kids because thats the topic of this discussion. So we started processing priority cases july 18th. And so what that means is that when we get a party case as identified by dhs as an unaccompanied child, that child receives their first master calendar hearing no less than ten days and no more than 21 days of the filing with the Immigration Court. So that goal is just for their first hear. We just need to make sure they get in and start their case. Within that 21day period. So you know, one thing thats on everyones mind and we get asked a lot of questions about is representation and access to Legal Services for their children. We work really closely with other Government Agencies as well as nonprofit organizations to explore ways in which we, as the court system, can assist in trying to help these kids get access to Legal Services. This summer we issued some guidance with respect to how to utilize friend of the court services. In the past weve issued guidance to Immigration Judges on how to employ Child Friendly Court practices and sort of reiterated that with our judges as we knew that they were going to see a lot more cases. And what the procedures that they can take in order to improve pro bono participation in the court system. We created specialized childrens dockets in all courts that see children so that we can ensure that children are not coming to court the same time as adults and so those child friendly procedures can be implemented in that special time when the kids are there. We, in addition, we expanded immigration judge training and we expanded the Legal Orientation Program for the custodians of unaccompanied alien children. So its important to note that that program is something that the office of energy resettlement does run rights presentation for the children but our program focusing on their custodians so when the kids are with their custodians we provide services to the custodians to let the custodians know whats going on, let them understand whats happening to the child, help them understand what, you know, their responsibilities are with respect to making sure the child comes to court, making sure they know what resources are available to them for legal access. The other thing that we did this summer because that program, the lopc program is what we call it, doesnt operate everywhere. We expanded a National Call center that allows custodians that are in areas where this program, the inperson program is not currently operational, to be able to call in to a center and ask questions, try to understand whats going on with the kids. You know, get an understanding of what, you know, what they have to do, what the kids have to do when they get to court and to help them understand what resources might be available in their communities to help them. In addition, some of you probably saw we announced this summer a partnership with the corporation for National Community service. A lot of you know that