Unaccompanied Minors and their Harrowing Journey to Safety

Top image: John Moore/Getty Images News/Getty Images

At 15 years old, Javier Sandoval's* mom told him it was time to leave his home in El Salvador for the U.S. She said he was now old enough to carry a gun and she was worried it was only days before local gang members would forcibly recruit him into their ranks.

Leaving behind his mom and siblings, Sandoval headed to the US-Mexico border on foot and crammed into vehicles with other migrants fleeing the violence and poverty of El Salvador.

It took Sandoval 15 days to reach the Rio Grande, which kept him a short distance from U.S. soil. To cross, we had to go with 10 other people on a boat that looked like it could hold only one person, said Sandoval in Spanish.

Once he reached U.S. soil, Sandoval was instructed to go to the top of a hill and wait for Border Patrol officers to find him and take him into custody. I remember people saying that the officers would come get us and take us somewhere nice and that we wouldn't need anything. We would have everything we needed, said Sandoval.

U.S. Border Patrol houses unaccompanied minors in detention centers like this. || Photo Credit: John Moore/Getty Images News/Getty Images

He wasn't prepared for what he faced once in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Sandoval said he was taken to an overcrowded detention center in Texas, where he would be held for 10 days, surpassing the maximum 72 hours minors are to be held in detention before being transferred to the custody of the Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement, who places unaccompanied minors in a shelter while family members are located to take them in.

When I got there, it was so crowded. I was looking around and thinking, where am I going to sleep? There was a lot of kids standing, taking turns to lay down and go to sleep, said Sandoval. As they were booking me, the officers said Welcome, this is your new home'. And when they said that, I got a really bad feeling.

He said there were no private restrooms and they were not allowed to shower or go outdoors.

We wanted to see the sun because the lights were on inside all the time. They would wake us up all the time, they wouldn't let us sleep, said Sandoval. I wanted to cry. I thought, God why am I here. Why did I come?'

In 2014, Sandoval was one of nearly 70,000 unaccompanied minors who traveled to the U.S. without a parent or guardian to escape the widespread violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The region of Central America, known as the Northern Triangle, has been left with a legacy of violence, lack of economic opportunity and weak institutions following the CIA-backed coups and ensuing bloody civil wars that rocked the region in the 80s.

The ongoing migration has brought an additional 40,000 unaccompanied minors into the U.S. every year since 2014, who have faced harrowing journeys fraught with violence and danger. Many have been victims of sexual assault, robbery, forced labor and lengthy periods of time without food or water.

Many migrants have perished riding atop La Bestia or The Beast freight train on their journey to the U.S. border. || Photo Credit: John Moore/Getty Images News/Getty Images

For Sandoval, arriving in the U.S. to be held in an overcrowded detention center was just one of numerous traumatic experiences throughout his journey and it wasn't until he was enrolled in a high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, that he was referred to see a mental health specialist at one of the district's many Wellness Centers.

Like many unaccompanied minors that have faced similar circumstances, Sandoval was suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Mental health organizations were unprepared for the influx of unaccompanied minors, but to ensure the 6,800 unaccompanied minors resettled in Los Angeles County since 2014 received proper care, nonprofit legal services organizations partnered with mental health organizations to refer children to mental health providers.

As part of when we first started talking to these children for their cases, a lot of them were so traumatized that we found we really needed to integrate a psychological evaluation before we could even start talking to them about their stories, said Teresa Borden, a spokesperson for the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), that provides pro bono legal assistance to unaccompanied minors.

CARECEN, along with Esperanza Immigrants Rights Project and Public Counsel, partnered with nonprofit mental health services organizations, including Amanecer Community Counseling and St. John's Well Child and Family Center, to refer children to mental health providers before forming their cases.

Many unaccompanied minors qualify for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) which gives children under the age of 21 a green card if they can prove in court that it is not in their best interest to return to their country.

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St. John's therapists do assessments for unaccompanied minors represented by CARECEN by documenting the child's history of trauma, research of the country and the abuse - socially and familial - to show in court that if child returns to their country, it could lead to suicide or the debilitation of their mental state. Raza said the screenings they've conducted have determined most all the unaccompanied minors were in need of mental health services.

Going into therapy is helpful because it helps them to first tell their story which helps us figure out what their asylum claim is, but it also helps in their grueling 2 to 3 hour interview with an asylum officer that is going to ask them about every detail of the harm that they've faced, said Arisa Raza, a staff attorney with the unaccompanied minors department at CARECEN.

Undocumented children have a

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