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The Texas Sheltered Care facility in Nixon is an emergency shelter that houses unaccompanied minor children for the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“If emotional can get some more people to come on board and help us with our kids for free, I’ll do whatever it takes,” Gaytan told the University Center audience. “If you came to visit and see our kids, you just could not help but open up your heart to them.”
Texas Sheltered Care has been in operation since June of 2003 and Gaytan related that it is through the Division of Unaccompanied Children Services (DUCS) program that they receive federal grant funding for the facility. The Department of Family Services oversees their licensing.
The Nixon shelter, which handles children from infants through 17 years, currently houses 96 children. “And they’re coming daily,” Gaytan added. She noted that in one recent evening 50 children were apprehended in the Laredo border sector, and this is only one of many sectors. The primary points of entry are Laredo, Brownsville and Eagle Pass, with the Nixon facility mainly receiving children from the Laredo and Eagle Pass sectors.
“I can only say that these children have great courage and endurance,” she said. “Sometimes I think we do not give them enough credit for what they do, how they made the trip to come here.”
Very seldom are these children from Mexico, with whom the United States has a “catch and release” program, meaning these children are immediately returned to Mexico when apprehended. Gaytan noted that today 100 percent of the shelter’s residents come from Central and South America, though they have occasionally had youngsters from Liberia, Nigeria and even Albania.
She recalled the Albanian boy who had crossed the ocean to come to America. The child had made his way first through Mexico, preparing himself by learning to speak Spanish. This served him well when he wound up in Texas Sheltered Care, as none of the staff spoke Albanian but could converse with him in Spanish.
“He was an amazing kid,” recalled Gaytan. “And we were able to reunify him with his uncle in New York.” She added, “Can you imagine being a parent, waking up one morning, giving your child a couple of tacos and saying, ‘Here, go to America?’ And that’s what they do, they come to America.”
Children who arrive at the shelter are coming here to live the American dream and thrilled to receive the little things we take for granted. Gaytan recalled the phone call made by one of their first residents to his mother. “Mom, I’m here in America,” he said. “I have a nice place to live. I have air-conditioning. I have floor underneath my feet and not dirt. And they gave me a brand new pair of tennis shoes.”
Gaytan noted that training is very intensive for shelter staff who, in addition to state guidelines, must follow those of Family Protective Services. Texas Sheltered Care raises the training bar even higher. The staff receives training in CPR, First Aid, life-guarding and behavioral intervention, with continual training given throughout the year on topics relating to the shelter.
A program called “Handle With Care” teaches staff how to de-escalate children with behavioral problems, notably how to properly restrain a child, if it becomes necessary. Gaytan noted that in other places in the past, improper methods of restraint were used, some resulting in children’s deaths.
What Gaytan and her staff do with an out-of-control child, she said, is “talk and talk and talk until we’re blue in the face.” When the first staff member becomes exhausted, the task is passed on to another until the child finally connects “to somebody who has punched the right buttons for them and has calmed them down,” she said, “because we do not want to do a restraint.”
One of the biggest issues the children face is separation loss, being alone in a land of strangers. Many are coming to the United States to find work and are upset about being kept at the shelter and unable to make money to send home, where their parents have often signed over their house or land to a “coyote” or smuggler to get their child into the U.S. Other children have lived on the streets all their lives and have problems dealing with authority figures, especially female ones.
Mostly, these children do not know how to be children. “It’s very, very difficult to get them out of that mode,” said Gaytan, “ to tell them that it’s OK to be a child, it’s OK to run outside and play — not have to worry about your siblings, not have to worry about working and coming back to help provide for the family.” Often this is the first time many have experienced this.
Gaytan is understandably proud of the shelter’s vocational program, which recently received a Best Practices Award at a DUCS program conference in Virginia. The shelter’s program keeps the children’s hands and minds busy building things and taking pride in the finished product.
The program started out small, building birdhouses, and graduated to the highly successful project of building their own bunk beds — all 96 of them! The facility had previously been a nursing home with crank style hospital beds and the children were thrilled with the bunk beds they had made themselves, being careful not to mark or scratch them and passing on this respect to the residents who came later.
The shelter hopes to eventually implement a program involving small motors, teaching lawn mower and bicycle repairs. Gaytan noted this would be something children who are not reunified with family or sponsors in the U.S., but are deported back to their homeland, could take back with them as a marketable skill.
Children brought to the facility receive physicals, immunizations and testing for tuberculosis, which is still prevalent in Central and South America. One of the shelter’s first residents had TB when he arrived. “He was very fortunate that he got caught,” said Gaytan, “so that we could give him the medical attention that he needed.” Eventually the boy was reunited with his uncle in Los Angeles, where she feels he is doubtless pursuing his dream of being a Spanish rapper, having already written an excellent and very moving rap song about his trek to the U.S.
The biggest element of the shelter’s program is reunification. Gaytan pointed out that 95 percent of these children know where they are headed when they cross the border, having with them the numbers of state-side relatives to contact. Case managers work with the youngsters, helping them to find family sponsors here, who must prove their relationship. They also guide the families through the necessary paperwork.
If the sponsors are illegally in the U.S., a child can still be turned over to them. However, the sponsors must come to pick them up and provide proper identification, something undocumented persons are often afraid to do, fearing they will be arrested. “They think we’re Immigration and we’re not,” said Gaytan.
Thorough background checks are also made on the sponsors to prevent the children from becoming a part of human trafficking, which Gaytan described as the biggest moneymaking crime in the United States. “Our kids come through so much and endure so much to get here,” said Gaytan. “We’ve had girls who have come to us who have been raped by their “coyote,” who got pregnant because of their rape. There are children who’ve gotten thrown off the train. The stories are endless.”
When the children are first apprehended they receive an NTA (notice to appear) in immigration court before Judge Susan Castro. “We are so fortunate to have her,” said Gaytan, “because she has and shows such great compassion for our kids.” She noted other districts are not as fortunate, with some judges not allowing the children the opportunity to find their relatives for reunification. Castro allows cases here to be re-set as many as four times, buying the children precious time for caseworkers to locate their families.
Another problem the children face is “aging out” at 18 years. “It’s very, very sad on days that a child has reached their 18th birthday at the shelter,” said Gaytan, “because that means he turns into an adult and I need to turn him over to Immigration and he goes to jail.” She noted she had met few compassionate members of the Border Patrol or Immigration. “We hear horror stories that happen to them,” she said of the children who “age out.”
Eventually, most will end up with deportation orders, either “full deportation” (meaning if they return to this country they can be sentenced to federal prison for up to 10 years) or “voluntary departure,” which means they can, at some time in the future, return to the United Sates. The shelter urges them to request “voluntary departure,” in hopes that a sponsor with legal status in the states will petition for them to receive permanent status.
It is also possible to petition for political asylum or to stay here under Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. For the latter, children must prove they have been abandoned and have no one to care for them either here or in their native land. It is a lengthy process.
Much assistance has been given them, Gaytan noted, by the San Antonio Bar Association, who has a rotating list of 30 attorneys who help the children with their immigration cases. They have received help through St. Mary’s law center as well.
Gaytan concluded with the reading of a poem written by her stepdaughter, describing the sad-eyed children who arrive at the shelter, the soles of their shoes worn out from walking to what they hope is a better life. Their dreams are summed up in the poem’s final lines: “One chance to rise above it all, in a country of endless possibilities.”
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