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INS Coverage
Reporting on Children Held in INS Detention
‘It was this human contact that gave us the ability to get to the heart of his story.’
By Chris L. Jenkins
At first, it appeared to be a straightforward
but intriguing news item:
Four teenagers from Tanzania
had vanished from an international
gathering of Boy Scouts in Virginia,
setting off an intense search by federal
and local officials. The adolescents were
soon discovered 80 miles to the north
in Washington, D.C. and, along with
other reporters, I wondered whether
their wanderlust was an adolescent
prank or a serious attempt to flee the
impoverished yet stable African nation.
The story had the potential of breaking
some of the news doldrums of
the summer of 2001.
It became less of a quirky
story, however, as soon as the
Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS) quickly
moved the teens to a secure
detention center in Alexandria,
Virginia, even though they had
valid tourist visas. There, they
were prevented from speaking
with their parents or lawyers
for several days. Even though foster
homes were available, the INS
insisted on keeping them detained and
whisked the scouts to another secure
facility in Pennsylvania, a three-hour
drive from their attorneys, who had
hoped to get them placed with a Richmond
foster family.
Reporting on
Unaccompanied Minors
The actions by the INS inspired a deeper
look at what happens to unaccompanied
minors who seek asylum in this
country. As journalists dug farther into
INS procedures, we found striking inconsistencies
in the government’s handling
of the case: If these four scouts
had valid tourist visas, was it legal for
the INS to detain them? And if the teens
had a legitimate fear of going home, as
their lawyers claimed, why was the INS
trying to deport them so quickly and
without a hearing to determine if they
had a valid case?
The case of the four Tanzanian Boy
Scouts was just one of several wellpublicized
examples of how INS procedures,
which would later come under
scrutiny from Congress in light of the
September 11 attacks, were not only
riddled with inconsistencies but in
some cases violated federal regulations.
Another African teenager, mentally
retarded, unable to speak English, and
…reporters gave voice to
neglected people who, in some
cases, were afraid to speak
about how they were being
treated.
abandoned by his mother in France,
arrived alone at Dulles Airport from
Europe. Stopped with a fake passport,
Malik Jarno, under questioning, admitted
that he was a minor fleeing political
persecution in Guinea. But despite a
birth certificate that showed that he
was 17 years old, INS officials still did
not believe him and placed him in an
adult immigration facility where he
claimed he was subjected to beatings
from not only adult inmates but also
guards.
When, with the help of an interpreter,
I spoke with him by phone—
after days of wrangling with the INS for
permission—he couldn’t understand
why no one would listen to his story.
He had no access to a lawyer, an advocate,
or even someone who could speak
his language, for nearly nine months.
Eventually the INS conceded that he
was a minor and transferred him to a
youth facility in Pennsylvania. But this
happened only after intensive media
coverage of his case. And while he still
had to convince a judge about his asylum
claim and remained fearful about
his future, he was relieved that he was
finally heard: “I can’t believe that someone
really wants to listen to me,” he
told me.
About 5,000 unaccompanied children
are detained by the immigration
agency each year. A third are secured in
juvenile jails with American teens who
have committed felonies, a
practice that is against the law
in most circumstances. Several
years ago a national study
found that 80 percent of these
unaccompanied minors were
not given attorneys, which is
also a violation of federal standards.
In some cases, children
were returned to their countries
without their claims being
heard by an immigration
judge.
Such circumstances presented an
opportunity for me and other journalists
to give voice to an invisible group
of youths, who sometimes would be in
fatal jeopardy if they returned to their
own countries. Yet in trying to learn
about their lives and tell their stories,
we were confronted with hurdle after
hurdle, and this prompted us to push
harder to keep government accountable.
With each successive story, I
sought more access and looked for
more evidence about the propriety of
the federal government’s policies and
procedures. INS information on conditions
of specific children was often
lacking and incomplete. The agency
also made it difficult to interview the
Boy Scouts, claiming that reporters
needed written permission from each
teenager’s parents before they could
24 Nieman Reports / Winter 2002