Every week, hundreds of migrants make the dangerous journey from Latin America to the U.S. border. The journey is even more concerning for a group of children.

“The stories are all the same, their parents send them north because they want them to survive," said Margo Cowan with Keep Tucson Together. "Whether it’s starvation or the horrific violence in their countries of origin.”

Cowan frequently works with unaccompanied minors to prevent deportation.

“There are legal mechanisms that allow people to present themselves at the border and apply for asylum, and it shouldn’t be a hostile environment,” Cowan said.

Latin American families are making use of this legal process. Last week, the Tucson Sector of Border Patrol processed around 107 unaccompanied migrant children.

“Smuggling organizations will bring these people and children, sometimes toddlers to these places in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere,” said Jesus Vasavilbaso, a U.S. Border Patrol Agent.

An agent at the Tucson sector says they don't usually deal with children migrants. Around 85% of migrants encountered at the tucson sector are adults that have to be tracked down and apprehended. Recent groups of children came from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, led by smugglers to turn themselves in to Border Patrol.

“The smuggling organizations sell this to the migrants saying that when you show up to the border, you just turn yourself in to Border Patrol, and they just let you in,” Vasavilbaso said.

But that’s not always how it works. The Tucson sector did a medical exam on each child then sent them to either health and human services or the office of refugee resettlement. Now those children have been sent to family members, child protective services, or back home.

This story was originally published by KGUN in Tucson, Arizona.

“Oaxaca is a very poor place, and there were not many things to eat because there is no money. There is no work there, and there, we planted milpa and pigweed. There wasn’t much else to eat besides that.

I was a little girl and we didn't have many clothes or shoes. When I was 14 years old, I decided to come here because children’s life was very sad there. I travelled with my brother.

The first time I came, it was raining a lot, so we were walking in mud and our clothes were very wet, so we walked and we arrived. We almost made it to where we were going to get to catch a ride to get here to California, and migration caught us and threw us back and so we went back again.

We met the one who crosses the people in the desert, and we decided to come with him. Fifty or 40, yeah, there were a lot of us.

From there, the coyote, he took us there in the desert, and we walked three nights and three days, and during the day, we rested and at night we walked. Many people get tired and die in the desert. I saw human hair and human bones.

We felt tired, we were hungry, and very thirsty too, because we didn't bring much water.

We arrived in Arizona.

From there, the van came to pick us up. We were like more than 20 people that got on that van.
We were packed on top of each other and there are people who are bigger than us and they are heavy, so when we got there, we had a lot of pain in our feet, we had blisters, like pus inside our feet.

I think it was more than 5 hours. I arrived in Oxnard, and from there, they brought me to Watsonville.

Yes, we felt— the first thing was mostly sadness. Leaving my family, like mom, it's very sad to remember. It's very sad to remember that, but for us it was very difficult to get out our village and walk in the desert, and we got there.

When I started working I was able to help my mother. I was able to send her a little bit of money.

I've been here for more than 15 years and I couldn't see my mom again because she died. It's been a long time since I could see her, and she died.

The hope I have is that someday they will give us papers so we can go back to Oaxaca to see my dad because my dad is still alive, and that is the hope I have. That is my hope.

My name is Alma and I am a farmworker.

The migrants who were flown from Florida to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts have been taken to a military base.

Approximately 50 migrants were offered shelter and support services at Joint Base Cape Cod, according to CNN.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he sent the migrants to Massachusetts so other communities can share the "burden" of the crisis at the Southern border.

NBC News reports that the number of migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border is approaching 8,000 per day.

“There is also going to be buses and there will likely be more flights, but I’ll tell you this, the legislature gave me $12 million and we’re gonna spend every penny of that to make sure that we’re protecting the people of the State of Florida," DeSantis said.

The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts said she will speak with the Justice Department about DeSantis' treatment of the migrants. Some of the migrants were reportedly told they were going to Boston.

President Joe Biden said the move by DeSantis and other Republican governors is "un-American."

"Instead of working with us on solutions, Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props," Biden said. "What they're doing is simply wrong... it's reckless."

There is a national child care crisis, and programs are looking for ways to help alleviate some of the issues families are facing when trying to secure child care.

Some parents are needing to wait between nine and 12 months to secure a spot on a waiting list. To help solve this problem, programs are turning towards education for refugees and immigrants to add them into the workforce.

“As refugees and immigrants come into our economy, we want them to enter into jobs right way,” said Deborah Young, the co-founder of Pamoja Early Childhood Education. “There are 27,000 teachers that are missing, so this is a great match. We have a huge talent force, and we have a need for them.”

The Pamoja Early Childhood Education workforce program is made up of refugees and immigrants from all over the world to serve as a pipeline for new early childhood educators.

Fatima Jafari, who is from Afghanistan, is in the program.

“For two years, I have studied early childhood education, and I am working as a teacher in the center,” Jafari said. “The program is so important for all the women in my community. They come into the United States, and they need to learn to communicate with the children and how to live in the United States in a new environment. They also need to learn to grow their kids in a new country.”

According to Child care Aware of America research, it shows that nearly 9,000 daycares closed in 37 states between 2019 and 2021. While there are also less day cares, child care center costs increased across the country at an average rate of 41%.

For this reason, Pamoja Early Childhood is utilizing refugees and immigrants by not only giving them the education to start a new life in this country but to help decrease the childcare worker shortage and promote diverse people in the industry.

“We need childcare, and we don’t have enough childcare. We don’t have enough childcare workers, mostly because we do not give professional wages or living wages even,” Young said. “Really investing in our refugees and our immigrants to get higher education, to get the credentials and knowledge and get into the workforce, they’re contributing in one way or another to our society, let’s get them to contribute in ways that creates the whole increase in well-being for everybody in our communities.”

According to the CDC, 94% of childcare workers are female and 40% of those are people of color.

“Right now, almost two years ago, I started the study of the children,” Jafari said. “One of my children is a little bit delayed, but I just want to learn a lot about the behavior and learn about growing the brain for him. Also, I want to help others who have children like me, and I can help them.”

“We want childcare workers to speak the same language and look the same as the child,” Young said. “We want child identity to really be confident in who they are who their family are and what their background and historical context are. And most of the background of teachers and leadership positions look like me.”

The developers of this program believe that bringing in women of color who speak multiple languages can help provide more options for child care to the country and overcome cultural differences while also closing the work shortage gap.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

Officials were investigating Tuesday whether Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis was behind a flight that picked up asylum-seekers on the Texas border and flew them — apparently without their knowledge — to California's capital, even as faith-based groups scrambled to find housing and food for them.

About 20 people ranging in age from 21 to 30 were flown by private jet to Sacramento on Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. It was the second such flight in four days.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and faith-based groups who have been assisting the migrants scheduled a news conference Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom lashed out at DeSantis as a “small, pathetic man” and suggested the state could pursue kidnapping charges.

DeSantis and other Florida state officials were mum, as they were initially last year when they flew 49 Venezuelan migrants to the upscale Massachusetts enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, luring them onto private jets from a shelter in San Antonio.

DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination to run for president, has been a fierce critic of federal immigration policy under President Joe Biden and has heavily publicized Florida’s role in past instances in which migrants were transported to Democratic-led states.

He has made the migrant relocation program one of his signature political priorities, using the state legislative process to direct millions of dollars to it and working with multiple contractors to carry out the flights. Vertol Systems Co., which was paid by Florida to fly migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, appears to be behind the flights to Sacramento on Monday and last Friday, Bonta said, adding that the migrants were carrying “an official document from the state of Florida” that mentions the company. The company didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

Altogether, more than three dozen migrants arrived in Sacramento on flights last Friday and on Monday. Most are from Colombia and Venezuela. California had not been their intended destination and shelters and aid workers were taken by surprise, authorities said.

Friday’s group was dropped off at the Roman Catholic Church diocese’s headquarters in Sacramento. U.S. immigration officials had already processed them in Texas and given them court dates for their asylum cases, and none had planned to arrive in California, said Eddie Carmona, campaign director at PICO California, a faith-based group helping the migrants in Sacramento.

Asylum seekers can change the location of their court appearances, but many are reluctant to try and instead prefer sticking with a firm date, at least for their initial appearances. They figure it is a guarantee, even if horribly inconvenient.

The Republican governors of Texas and Arizona have previously sent thousands of migrants on buses to New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., but the rare charter flights by DeSantis mark an escalation in tactics. The two groups sent to Sacramento never went through Florida. Instead, they were approached in El Paso by people with Florida-linked paperwork, sent to New Mexico, then put on private flights to California’s capital, California officials and advocates said.

Bonta, who met with some of the migrants who arrived Friday, said they told him they were approached by two women who spoke broken Spanish and promised them jobs. The women traveled with them by land from El Paso to Deming, New Mexico, where two men then accompanied them on the flight to Sacramento. The same men were on the flight Monday, Bonta said.

“To see leaders and governments of other states and the state of Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, acting with cruelty and inhumanity and moral bankruptcy and being petty and small and hurtful and harmful to those vulnerable asylum seekers is blood-boiling,” Bonta said in a Monday interview.

Some of the migrants who arrived Friday told Bonta they met on their nearly three-month journey to the United States and decided to stick together to keep each other safe as they slept on the streets in several countries, he said.

As the migrants arrived in California Monday, a Texas sheriff’s office announced it has recommended criminal charges over the two flights to Martha’s Vineyard last year.

Johnny Garcia, a spokesman for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, said that at this time the office is not naming suspects. It’s not clear whether the local district attorney will pursue the charges, which include misdemeanor and felony counts of unlawful restraint, according to the sheriff’s office.

The office of New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham had no specifics as to why the immigrants were taken from Texas to New Mexico before being flown to California.

“Gov. Lujan Grisham stresses, yet again, the urgent need for comprehensive, thoughtful federal immigration reform which is rooted in a humanitarian response that keeps border communities in mind,” the governor’s spokesperson, Caroline Sweeney, said Monday.

Last year, DeSantis directed Republican lawmakers in Florida to create a program in his office dedicated to migrant relocations. It specified that the state could transport migrants from locations anywhere in the country. The law was designed to get around questions about the legality of transporting people on a flight that originated in Texas.

Florida’s alleged role in the arrival of the two groups in Sacramento is sure to escalate the political feud between DeSantis and Newsom, who have offered conflicting visions on immigration, abortion and a host of other issues.

___

Rodriguez reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Fla., Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed.

The Biden administration plans to roll out a new rule eliminating potential hurdles for immigrants depending on public benefits and trying to obtain legal status, according to a newly proposed regulation.

The proposed change brings the so-called "public charge" rule back to the forefront.

Video above: The Journey To Becoming An American Citizen

The Trump administration had modified the decades-old regulation in a way that could reshape the legal immigrant population in the United States by making it more difficult for individuals to obtain status.

The Biden administration is changing course by considering what public benefits would indicate that an individual is largely depending on the federal government and excluding benefits, like food assistance programs and housing benefits, that shouldn't be used against an individual who is otherwise relying on their own resources.

Under the proposed rule, the Department of Homeland Security would consider benefits, like cash assistance for income maintenance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and long-term institutionalization at government expense, according to a notice sent to Congress.

"The 2019 public charge rule was not consistent with our nation's values," said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a statement. "Under this proposed rule, we will return to the historical understanding of the term 'public charge' and individuals will not be penalized for choosing to access the health benefits and other supplemental government services available to them."

Under current regulations put in place in 1996, the term "public charge" is defined as someone who is "primarily dependent" on government assistance, meaning it supplies more than half their income.

But it only counted cash benefits, such as TANF or Supplemental Security Income from Social Security. The Trump administration widened the definition of who is expected to be dependent on the government by including more benefit programs. That change is no longer in effect.

Immigration officials can take into account an applicant's financial resources, health, education, skills, family status and age. But few people are rejected on these relatively narrow grounds, experts said.

The use of disaster assistance, pandemic assistance and other benefits will also not count against immigrants, according to the notice.

DHS argued in the new proposed regulation that changes made in 2019 by the Trump administration had caused a chilling effect within immigrant communities, citing experts, and led to immigrants avoiding benefits like medical care over concerns that use of those benefits might keep them from obtaining legal status.

As a result, the Biden administration proposes to adopt a standard similar to what was used prior to 2019. The proposed rule will have a 60-day public comment period.

DALLAS — The U.S. government will use the downtown Dallas convention center to hold up to 3,000 immigrant teenagers as sharply higher numbers of border crossings have severely strained the current capacity to hold youths.

During a White House briefing Monday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged the administration is facing a "big problem" on the US-Mexico border. More than 4,000 unaccompanied minors are in Border Patrol custody.

Once in Border Patrol custody, they are supposed to be turned over to Health and Human Services, however because of coronavirus pandemic safety measures, capacity at HHS facilities have been limited.

“We recognize this is a big problem. The last administration left us a dismantled and unworkable system, and like any other problem, we're going to do everything we can to solve it," Psaki told reporters Monday.

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas will be used for up to 90 days beginning as early as this week.

That's according to written notification sent to members of the Dallas City Council and provided to The Associated Press. The memo says federal agencies will use the facility to house boys ages 15 to 17.

The memo describes the soon-to-open site as a “decompression center.”

WASHINGTON —

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to provide a specific date for when the media will get access to Border Patrol facilities temporarily holding thousands of migrant children seeking to live in the United States, but said Sunday the Biden administration was committed to transparency and "we're working to get that done as soon as we can."

More than 16,000 unaccompanied children were in government custody as of Thursday, including about 5,000 in substandard Customs and Border Protection facilities.

Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been calling on the administration to open the facilities to the cameras, asserting that the current policy is designed to keep the public from "fully realizing" what is happening at the border.

Republican officials are also blaming the Biden administration for actions they say are leading more people from Central America to seek entry into the United States. "It's not a crisis, it's a complete loss of sovereignty down there," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said.

Graham recently visited the border and said he saw a facility designed to hold 80 children with about 1,000 in it. He called on the administration to turn away every unaccompanied minor after testing them for "human trafficking abuses."

"If you don't, we'll have 150,000 a month by this summer," Graham said Sunday.

U.S. authorities reported encounters with more than 100,000 migrants on the southern border in February, the highest since a four-month streak in 2019.

Encounters have averaged about 5,000 people per day throughout March, which would be about a 50% increase over February if those figures hold for the entire month.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said the surge was cyclical.

"They're not the result of one administration's policies or another administration's policies. They're the result of, for example, weather disasters in the region. They're the result of people fleeing poverty and violence," Bedingfield said. "So we saw spikes in 2014. We saw them in 2019 when the Trump administration had perhaps the cruelest imaginable policies in place, family separation to try to deter people from coming, and they still came."

The Biden administration continued to emphasize on the Sunday talk shows that the U.S.-Mexico border "remains closed" and that the majority of adults are being turned away. But Psaki said the administration was not going to force children to go back on a treacherous journey.

"They are fleeing challenging economic circumstances, hurricanes, prosecution in some scenarios," she said. "It does not mean that they get to stay in the United States. It means their cases are adjudicated and we want to treat them humanely, make sure they are in a safe place while their cases are adjudicated. That's what we're talking about here."

Former President Donald Trump expanded and fortified border walls while championing "zero tolerance" policies that made it more difficult to seek U.S. asylum and led to some immigrant parents being separated from their children.

Under federal law, children arriving at the border without parents should be transferred within three days from U.S. Border Patrol custody to long-term facilities run by the U.S. Health and Human Services until they can be released to family members or sponsors.

Psaki said the administration is committed to transparency and providing access to those temporary Border Patrol facilities as soon as it can.

"We are mindful of the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic. We want to keep these kids safe, keep the staff safe," Psaki said.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called on the president to let the media accompany him to a temporary detention facility in Dallas on Monday.

"I again urge you to stop denying reality, confront the consequences of your policies, and allow the media access to these facilities," Cruz wrote in a letter.

Psaki and Graham spoke on "Fox News Sunday," while Bedingfield was interviewed on ABC's "This Week."

There are more than 2.5 million Chinese immigrants in America. Many make the journey to the U.S. and share a similar experience to Yi Andy Chen’s father.

“He got punched. He got locked up in different jails in different countries from South Asia to Mexico, and he didn’t even know where he was supposed to go the next minute,” said Yi.

In the early 90s, it took his father two years, walking across mountains and hitching rides on boats, to get from Fujian Province, China to New York City. Throughout the entire journey, Yi and his family had no communication with Yi’s father.

“At one point, we didn’t even know if he was alive,” Yi said.

His father made the dangerous journey out of desperation.

“At that time in China, we were not allowed to have two boys at home, and I was the second son,” Yi explained.

The second son had to be hidden for fear of being taken away by the government at the time. Yi’s father didn’t want to live with that fear forever, and he wanted the chance at giving his children more opportunities in the land of opportunity: America.

“I grew up in China until 14 years old,” said Hailing Chen.

Hailing is of no familial relation to Yi, but their families do come from the same province in China. Chen's father made a similar journey from Fujian to the U.S. as Yi’s father, except Chen’s father, who chose to never speak about that part of his immigrant story

“I know it was tough,” said Hailing. “And I learned some stories that he worked in the restaurants and lived in the basement, and those kinds of stories really break my heart.”

Like most first-generation immigrants, both Chen’s fathers worked low-wage jobs for long hours, often seven-day work weeks and 12 to 16-hour days in restaurants. They lived extremely modestly, often boarded with a dozen other people in a small New York City one-bedroom apartment in order to save up for their families to legally come to the U.S. and to give their next generation a better chance in life.

“You know, he gave me a chance to go to college,” Chen said of his father.

Chen and Yi both went to college. Yi now lives the quintessential American dream, owning a small business in Queens. Chen studied accounting but found his passion was actually fighting for immigrant rights and has since become an advocate. After turning to Uber for work during the Great Recession, Chen helped immigrant drivers fight for union rights and protection.

“We were able to successfully pass a number of bills that are on the state and city level to provide job protection, to provide minimum pay,” said Chen.

This year, Chen decided to further stand up for his community by running for office in the biggest city in the country. He is the first immigrant from the Fujian Province to ever do so. Yi became the second, and now, there is a third candidate. They are running in different districts, which means they all have a chance of winning their races and NYC could see all three potentially as the first-ever Fujian council members.

"Once we announced our candidacy for city council this year, all the community leaders, they said, 'We have been waiting for this moment for far too long. For almost 100 years,’” Yi recalled.

Their candidacies are a potential moment for representation in America that each of them and their community hopes lead to better a better understanding and acceptance of their people and all immigrants.

“We come here because not only do we think we can get something from this country, but also we think we can contribute,” said Chen. “Immigrants have always demonstrated a bonus and bravery to this country.”

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Reopening offices and hiring more staff, agencies across the U.S. are preparing to welcome more refugees. Many were forced to close or scale back operations after years of record-low admissions set by the Trump Administration.

“We literally pick them up at the airport," said Michael Hopkins, CEO of Jewish Family Service (JFS) of San Diego.

Resettlement agencies like JFS welcome refugees to their new homes in cities across the U.S.

“Everything from furniture to dishes to food in the fridge, we start the family off. So, we’re beginning to plan for all of that," said Hopkins.

In anticipation of more refugee arrivals, they’re renting apartments, recruiting volunteers, and hiring specialized staff.

“In past years, San Diego alone could resettle 5,000 individuals. So, when you think about 15,000 throughout the entire country, it’s a rather small number," says Hopkins, referring to the 15,000 refugee cap set by President Trump for 2021.

Each year in the United States, the president consults Congress and sets an annual cap for refugee admissions.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) says before the Trump Administration, the average annual ceiling exceeded 95,000. The organization says presidents of both parties have set even higher ceilings: President Ronald Reagan’s highest ceiling was 140,000, and President Barack Obama set a refugee admissions target of 110,000 for 2017.

After Trump took office, he lowered Obama's 110,000 refugee cap to 50,000 and would continue reducing admission in the years ahead:

• 2018 : 45,000 cap
• 2019: 30,000 cap
• 2020: 18,000 cap
• 2021: 15,000 cap

Despite promising to raise admissions, President Biden announced in April he wouldn’t be doing it this year. But after weeks of backlash, he reversed the decision, raising the cap to 62,500 refugees, quadrupling Trump’s refugee cap.

But resettling 62,500 this fiscal year is unlikely.

“The whole process was really dismantled," said Hopkins. "So, the Biden Administration, in order to get the numbers back up, also has to reinvest in the infrastructure and get government personnel to all those locations to be able to do this work.”

The UN Refugee Agency says of the 80 million people who’ve been forced from their homes worldwide, 26 million are identified as refugees.

Unlike asylum-seekers, refugees are vetted and screened overseas in a lengthy process. Hopkins says they've already fled their country of origin either because of persecution, war, or violence. Asylum-seekers leave their country seeking protection from persecution and human rights violations, but they haven't yet been legally recognized as a refugee and must wait to receive a decision on their asylum claim.

“As a person who was a first-year in a university, that was extremely difficult, having car bombs and IEDs and terrorist groups operating," said Eder Raheemah, an Iraqi refugee resettled to the U.S. five years ago.

Born in Mosul, Iraq, Raheemah says he was familiar with the sounds of war. But by the time he got to college, the violence intensified.

“What’s next? Even if you get a Ph.D. in physics, what would you do with it? That’s the worst part, the absence of hope," said Raheemah.

His family waited five years before they were accepted to the U.S. as refugees.

“That was one of the real happy moments for me and my family," said Raheemah. “Having a job where you can feed your family and be secure, that’s all."

Raheemah says he was lucky to know English already when he came to the U.S. but he says his family was blessed to have so many people help them get acclimated to their new home.

"It's a completely different country, culture, language. Different lifestyle, different everything. But it's still, it's security," said Raheemah.

Hopkins says they may only get a couple of day's notice that a refugee is coming to San Diego.

"We need to do a lot of this work, whether they’re coming or not. Because we can’t wait until the moment they come," said Hopkins.

But he says they'll be ready to serve more refugees when they arrive.

“Today is exactly five years I’ve been in the United States. And after those five years, I’ve been blessed like 200 times than what I ever thought of,” said Raheemah.

An engineer and new homeowner, he hopes more refugees will soon get the same chance.

“I can’t ask to be rich because I think I am rich, because I’m safe.”