Texas judges deporting more than 80 percent of unaccompanied minors

Eric Gay | The Associated Press
Unaccompanied minor detainees sleep in a holding cell Wednesday at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility at the Fort Brown Border Patrol Station in Brownsville.

McALLEN — Immigration lawyer Carlos Garcia recently received a call from the family of a 15-year-old girl who said she had been kidnapped and raped by the man who smuggled her into the country illegally.

Garcia met her she was sitting in a detention center, waiting to see an immigration judge.

“If we wouldn’t have come in contact with her or if some attorney would not have come in contact with her, she could have easily fallen through the cracks,” the McAllen-based lawyer said.

The teen is one of thousands of immigrants without legal status at the mercy of Texas immigration judges who are deporting about eight out of 10 unaccompanied minors.

Read more: http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/texas-judges-deporting-more-than-percent-of-unaccompanied-minors/article_c31ecab8-37f9-11e5-82e8-738cc23a091a.html