Rachel Rutter: Championing the Rights of Unaccompanied Immigrant Children

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To a court appointed lawyer in immigration court. So if the government puts you in deportation proceedings to try to deport you, you have to be able to pay for a lawyer yourself. And if you can't, then you would have to represent yourself. Meanwhile, the government is always represented by an attorney who's trying to deport you. Obviously that's very unfair for an adult, let alone for a child. I would love to see all kids have a lawyer in immigration court. Unfortunately, it looks like the administration is going to try to cut legal services for unaccompanied kids this year. So we will see what happens with that.

Good morning, I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. And I know Madison keeps telling me you're getting repetitious Guy, but I have to say we are on a mission to make you remarkable. So what we do is look for remarkable people all over the world and bring them on our podcast so that you can listen to them and be remarkable too. And today we have someone who is a CNN hero, which is hero with a capital H. That's a big deal. It's a big reward, a big award. I wish I could be one. But anyway, that's an aside. So this is Rachel Rutter. She is executive director of Project Libertad and she helps unaccompanied minors navigate the immigration system and adjust to living in America. So, Rachel Rutter, thank you very much for being on our podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Listen, let's start off with just explaining what your organization does. It's fascinating that what you do, and it's also kind of depressing that it's necessary that you do what you have to do. So please explain what you do.

I think necessary and depressing is like the perfect way to describe my job. Actually, no one's ever said it like that before. So our work is, as you said, primarily with unaccompanied minors, but generally with newcomer immigrant youth. And we have a whole host of services to try to help them adapt to being in the US and take a really holistic approach to meeting their needs. So, of course, on the legal side, with my background as an immigration attorney, we help them apply for different types of immigration status. So that can be things like helping them apply for asylum, representing them in immigration court while they're going through that process, helping them apply for different types of visas they may qualify for. And then we have a whole bunch of social service programs as well to complement the legal services. So we have a case management team that works with kids to connect them with resources that they need in the community, whether that's getting access to medical or dental care, mental health support, whatever the case may be. We offer mental health services, ESL classes, summer camp, programs in school, programming for newcomers. So just really trying to take that wraparound, holistic approach.

This may sound like a dumb question, but why are these children unaccompanied when they're doing this?

So when we say that a child is unaccompanied, like in immigration world, that means that they arrived in the US by themselves as a minor under age 18, without a parent or legal guardian, and with no lawful immigration status. So it's like a very specific meaning in the immigration world. And being designated as unaccompanied when they arrive in the US Gives them certain special protections under the law as they go throughout their immigration process. And so what happens generally is that once they're apprehended at the border, they're placed in a shelter through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is the branch of the government that oversees unaccompanied children. And then the goal is that there's a caseworker through ORR who will help to match them with a sponsor in the community. So generally, that's like a family member or a family friend who's already here in the US Maybe a parent or an aunt or an uncle or something like that who's already here, and then they would be released to go live with that person, while at the same time they're being placed in deportation proceedings in immigration court. So it's not that they just get to come live here indefinitely with that person, that sponsor. It's just you're going to live with that person while your immigration case is going on. And that's then how we would end up working with them in our programs here in the community.

And how long does this legal process take these days?

It really depends on what type of process they're doing. There's a lot of different Types of immigration status. It also ebbs and flows depending on lots of different factors, what country the child is from, what's going on elsewhere in the government, like what type of funding is available for officers to process the cases and all those types of things. But to give you an idea, I have kids who applied for asylum back in 2020, which is when we first started doing legal work through the organization, because prior to that we were offering some other services, but not legal services yet. And those cases have just been pending since 2020. They have not been granted an interview, which would be their next step. So that's five years of just waiting for those kids with no resolution. We also do another really type of common case called Special Immigrant Juvenile status, which is a type of status for kids who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected by one of their parents. And those cases can take many years as well. There's a part of that process that happens in family court without getting too into the weeds. That can take many months. And then you apply for the Special Immigrant Juvenile status after the family court portion. That can take another, I would say, six to nine months to get a response. If that gets approved, then they're going to be waiting another three or four years to be able to even apply for a green card. And then after that, the green card can take a couple of years, and then it's five years of a green card before you can apply for citizenship. So it varies depending on, like, the type of case and all these other factors. But just to give you the two types of cases that I most often work on, you can see how long that it can take.

Wow. You mentioned the F word twice. F as in funding. And you also said something kind of general about depends on what's going on with the government. So you just named some numbers of five years or so. But this was before all this drama. So now what's the conditions? I mean, certainly you can't make a case that things are going to go smoother and faster now, right?

No, definitely not. So there is a lot going on. That is a huge question. We've definitely seen a big increase in ICE enforcement and the number of arrests, people in detention, in ICE detention. So that is one thing in terms of just talking specifically about, like, case processing times. I think a lot of the things that the Trump administration is doing is going to make case processing times worse, which is interesting because they are always talking about wanting people to take the legal pathways and things like that. And this is a whole other tangent, but for the majority of people There is no legal pathway. It's silly to ask people to take a pathway that doesn't exist. But they're also doing a lot of things that are making the paths that do exist less efficient than they already were. So we already have a huge immigration court backlog, millions of cases backlogged, and they're firing lots of immigration judges. So that's even fewer judges to hear those cases, which creates an even bigger backlog for people who are going through a legal process. And then there's also been lots of different funding cuts across the federal government, as we've seen, that are going to affect employees who would process those cases. So they're doing a lot of funding cuts that are actually making the system even less efficient. At the same time, they're doing a lot to try to chip away at due process and be able to deport people without hearings as quickly as possible. So in that sense, the process can be sped up, but in a very unfair way where people aren't getting a chance to defend themselves and demonstrate that they might qualify for legal status. So there's a lot going on in the world right now.

If only they had $5 million each and they could just purchase their citizenship with the gold card. I don't want to be parano. I don't want to sound like I'm trying to make something out of nothing, but do you think all of this is, like, on purpose to discourage people from coming?

Oh, absolutely. I don't think that's paranoid at all. I think the Trump administration and administrations on both sides of the political spectrum have always been about deterrence and border enforcement and any kind of, like, benefit that we give to people. They want it to come at the expense of having more border enforcement or having stricter policies or pitting certain groups that they deem like the good immigrants against the bad ones in their eyes. So, like, anytime there's any talk of any type of reform, it's always okay, we'll give you these couple of good things. But then we're going to do these other things that make enforcement worse at the border. And the reality is that long term, we've seen that deterrence just doesn't actually work. You may see a short term decrease in border crossings and things like that. Like right now, what we're seeing is that the border is totally shut down to asylum seekers, which I think is illegal under our own laws and under international laws and treaties. And I did see that. I believe the Florence Project and some other organizations actually just filed a lawsuit this week. Against the federal government to try to force them to allow people to seek asylum, which we're supposed to be doing. Deterrence doesn't work. We try to shut down the border. Maybe short term we see a decrease in crossings and things like that, like with the border being shut down right now. But in the long term, the root causes that are driving people to come here, and particularly with the population that I work with, a lot of Central American families who are fleeing gang violence and really horrible life threatening conditions. And those conditions are, you know, for the most part a result of US foreign policy in that region over many years. And unless those root causes that are driving them north to seek safety are addressed, they're going to keep coming. So that deterrence doesn't really have a long term effect on stopping people from coming to the us but what it does do is make migrating even more dangerous. Last year the United nations said that the U.S. mexico border is actually the most dangerous land route for migrants in the entire world. There are entire organizations and programs at universities that are dedicated to trying to identify people's remains who perish trying to cross the border. Because our enforcement and our border wall and all of that stuff forces people to go into more and more like remote routes in the desert. And it's super dangerous. And the government knows that and they choose to do it anyway, knowing that people will die in hopes of deterring people. And again, it just, it's just silly because it doesn't actually work. And we know that by now.

So this is a dumb question, but I'm not assuming a world of perfect information. So these poor people in Central America don't know what they're walking into. I'm sure they know what they're walking into. So they know they're walking into years and years of delays and prosecution and deportations and all that shit. And it must be that it's so much worse there that they're willing to put up with all this here. So what are they running from? What are they trying to get away from?

You're absolutely right. And I always say that when we do trainings and presentations on this topic that you have to think about how bad things are that people are willing to come here and go through all of that and go through the dangerous journey to arrive here. So some of the most common stories that we hear, particularly from Central America, which is kind of my niche, is the gang violence. So there's two primary gangs, that's Ms. 13 and the 18th street gang and they pretty much control large swaths of Central America. In many places, they are synonymous with the government or the police are working with them. So there's really no kind of outside governmental authority people can go to for help. In terms of the kids that we work with, really common fact patterns are boys, particularly teenage boys, being forcibly recruited into the gang where they're being threatened that either they're going to be killed or their family members or loved ones are going to be killed if they don't join the gang. And they either have to leave because those threats are real and they really do carry those threats out if they won't comply. And similarly with girls, we see oftentimes girls trying to be forced to be like a girlfriend to an older man who's a gang member. And we're talking young girls, 11, 12, 13 years old who are being forced to be a quote unquote girlfriend to a gang member. And if they don't want to, again, there's threats against them and their family members if they're not complying. So we see a lot of girls coming because of that. We also see a lot of like extortion cases where you have to just to exist in these different gang territories, you have to pay like an extortion tax just to keep your business open, or to ride the bus in that neighborhood or to pass through that territory or whatever. And if you can't pay it anymore, they start increasing it and you can't pay it. Then again, there's like death threats against you and your family. We also have a lot of kids who deal with different types of abuse within their families of origin, Whether that's domestic violence, sexual abuse. There's also a lot of kids that we see who are being discriminated against or afraid for their lives because of their gender identity or orientation. So those are some of the really common stories that we hear. We also see see a lot of kids who are out of school for a really long time in their home country or have very limited formal education, A lot of child labor trafficking, and oftentimes a bunch of these different kind of factors are at play in the same kids story.

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How do you wrap your mind around what this country is doing? Because it seems to me that America being as wealthy and powerful as possible, we should be trying to help other people who are less wealthy and less successful and less fortunate. But we seem to believe that we should just keep everybody out and just make things good for us. Is there another side to this story about why we should be making all these deterrents happen?

It's really hard for me to understand. And I think what I tend to find when I talk to people who are anti immigration is that they really just don't actually know the facts of what they're talking about. There's a lot of really common myths about immigration and immigrants that get repeated and repeated and they're simply not true. So a lot of times when people will know what I do and try to argue with me or want to talk about it. I grew up in a rural part of Pennsylvania where a lot of the people who live there are Trump supporters and things like that. So whenever I come in touch with those people and they want to talk about immigration and things, a lot of the talking points they repeat are just things that aren't true, but they don't know that. So a lot of their belief system about it is just not based in real facts. For example, we hear a lot of times, well, my great great grandparents came here the right way. So people should just get in line and come here the right way. The reality is that the laws were very different when a lot of our grandparents, great grandparents, came here. And most of them would not actually be eligible to immigrate to the US under the laws that we have today. And for the vast majority of people, whether you're someone who is in the US and you're undocumented, or you're somebody who is abroad and you want to try to immigrate to the U.S. for most people, there is literally no path to do that. There's no general application you can file to say, hey, I want to become a green card holder, I want to become a citizen, I want to get a work permit that doesn't exist. You have to kind of fit into one of three primary buckets. And those are humanitarian, which is things like asylum or refugee status, employment based visas, or family petitions where you have a family member who is a close relative that can petition for you. All of those different buckets have very strict requirements, and if you don't fit into one of them, there's nothing else you can do. You just don't have a path. So that's one thing that gets repeated all the time. We also hear a lot about, like, immigrants bringing crime, when really we know that many studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes, including violent crimes, than US Born citizens. We hear about immigrants stealing jobs or hurting the economy. And again, many studies bear out that immigrants actually strengthen our economy and create jobs and create businesses and pay lots of taxes that they don't then benefit from. So my feeling on that is a lot of people just keep citing these myths and they just actually don't know the facts. So part of what we do is try to put out a lot of educational information, do a lot of stuff like this, do training sessions, particularly with, like, teachers and people like that who are coming into contact with these kids, so that they do have the facts. And yeah, I think, as I said, immigrants make our community safer. They help our economy, they help us to have more culture, different types of food, different music, all these different things that they bring to our communities to make them stronger. So I really don't see any valid argument for why we should be keeping people out. You know, it's really interesting. I saw with Trump talking about trying to make Canada the 51st state. He said something about how, like, it would be a great 51st state, there's just an arbitrary line there. And I was like, it's really interesting that he can say that the U.S. canada border is an arbitrary line, but then make such a big deal about people coming across the southern border. And I really think the lines are arbitrary and we're all humans and we should all be supporting each other. Wow, that was a really long answer.

That's okay. But this is why you're a CNN hero. In a sense, you're doing God's work, right? I mean, God's work is different these days. It has a very different meaning today. So how many kids are we talking about? What's the number you have to wrap your mind around of number of kids who are going through this experience every year.

Oh, I don't know if I have that number off the top of my head. In our area alone, I think I recently read that, like, as far as just unaccompanied children, there have been over maybe nearly 1500 to 2000 released to our area from Orr in the last fiscal year.

When you say release to your area, what does that mean? They came over the border in Texas or California or something. And how did they get to Pennsylvania? How did they get. Get released in Pennsylvania?

Yeah, so that's what I was talking about earlier with about, like, them having sponsors. So they get sent to this Office of Refugee Resettlement. That can be a group home shelter. It can be like a foster home. It depends on their age and, like, where their space and all those factors. And then they have a caseworker at the shelter, and that person will then ask them, like, do you have anybody here in the US Maybe they have a parent who was already here or some other family member or whatever. And then they'll do background checks and have that child then released to the sponsor. So that's what I mean when I say release. They'll let them leave immigration detention and go to be with that sponsor while their court cases is going through the immigration courts.

And what's your caseload right now, your personal caseload?

I have about 90 right now.

90?

Yeah.

You are trying to take 90 kids through this system right now?

Yes. Wow.

And are there legal firms who are doing pro bono work and helping you, or. I mean, are you, Rachel? I mean, are you just standing out there by yourself?

So for my cases, I'm representing them. There are, you know, other nonprofits in our area and throughout the country that do different types of immigration work with families with unaccompanied kids, with survivors of domestic violence, with people who have been exploited at their workplaces. There's all kinds of different, like, iterations and organizations and things doing this work. There are definitely firms that also do pro bono work. We don't really have any partners in that at this moment. We do work closely with some, with fellow attorneys who are family law attorneys to do those special immigrant juvenile status cases I was mentioning earlier. But, yeah, we're directly representing those 90 kids.

Wow. That must be the third time I said wow in this conversation. Let me ask you a question. And. And you can say you don't want to answer this question. I, quite frankly, wouldn't blame you. Maybe. But are you afraid at all that you're on some kind of list at DOGE or the FBI or Department of justice because you're this activist who's trying to bring in these illegal immigrants and trying to help these people break the law and all that. You think you're on somebody's list?

Yeah, I've definitely worried about that. My husband And I have talked about it. That list does exist, at least for government employees. There's a website that has, like, you know, radicals within USCIS or whatever, and it's just people who, like, support immigrant rights. It's, like, actually nothing that radical, but a friend sent me that list because there was somebody that was a former coworker of ours who was on it, who now works for the government and ended up on that list. And with all of the CNN publicity, most of it was very overwhelmingly positive, but we definitely started getting a lot of, like, hate mail. And it was interesting because I asked, like, the other honorees, hey, is this happening to you, too? And they were like, no. What are you talking about? So immigration is a very heated, polarizing issue. People get really mad about it. Despite that, they don't really understand it that well. We've gotten kind of scary emails and messages and things like that, which we did report to the police and keep a record of in case anything more were to come of it. I don't know of any, like, official lists, but I definitely think it's a possibility, especially with the executive order that came down recently about student public service loan forgiveness for student loans, which I expect there to be, like, litigation about, and I'm hoping that it will get blocked. But basically, that order said that anybody who's doing work under the public service loan forgiveness program at nonprofits that do things that Trump doesn't like, basically, like doing immigration work was specifically mentioned in it. Doing work with LGBT youth, things like that, trying to say those people wouldn't then get their loans forgiven. You're supposed to get your loans forgiven after 10 years of public service, and they're trying to undo that. For people who are doing work that Trump doesn't align with the mission. So I could definitely see that spiraling into something more.

Pretty soon, that kind of work will be immigration work, it'll be climate control work, it'll be LGBTQ rights, it'll be female. What's not going to be on the.

Habitat for Humanity was, like, one of the latest ones they were going after. It's. Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Carter is literally turning over in his grave. How can you do that? Okay, so let me ask, what can people do to support you, people who are listening to this podcast?

Yeah. So we have a lot of volunteer opportunities. If you're not in our area, we also have a lot of remote opportunities that are available. So definitely volunteering. There's stuff for everyone, depending on your skill set and what you're interested in, there are opportunities to work directly with the community that we serve. There are also opportunities to do behind the scenes stuff like fundraising. We have remote ESL classes as well that are an option if you're remote but want to work directly with the community. So lots of options there. If you go to our website, it's projectlibertad.org volunteer. You can learn more about that. Donating, of course is always welcome. We have so many kids with so many needs that we're trying to meet all the time. Whatever people are able to give is appreciated and goes really far. We're a small organization trying to do a lot, so every dollar really does help. And then if you can share the accurate information you've learned from listening to this podcast with somebody who might not have it, that's also really helpful to help get correct facts out in the world about immigration.

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Let me ask you a very theoretical question. Let's say you had a magic wand. Or let's say I had a magic wand and I waved it at you and I said now you get to design the immigration system for the United States. So Rachel, describe that system, the perfect system you would like to See, implemented that, I guess it has to represent both sides. The security on one side, but also the empathy and the desire to make the world a better place on the other side. And those things don't necessarily have to conflict, but they are at least different. So how would you design an immigration system?

I know this is probably a bridge too far for a lot of people, but I am all for open borders. We already have open borders for wealthy white people who want to retire in another country. So I think that people hear open borders and think it's crazy, but from what I've read and studied about it, it would work like moving from state to state within the United States. You still have identification and things like that. So we still know who people are and where they are and all of that. But without this punitive aspect of ICE detention and all of this. Barring that, I would love to see us just not put kids in immigration court proceedings, not deport children. And short of that, if we're taking it back even further, having universal representation for immigrant kids or for all immigrants in immigration proceedings, because we didn't really touch on this. But there is no right to a court appointed lawyer in immigration court. So if the government puts you in deportation proceedings to try to deport you, you have to be able to pay for a lawyer yourself. And if you can't, then you would have to represent yourself. Meanwhile, the government is always represented by an attorney who's trying to deport you. Obviously that's very unfair for an adult, let alone for a child. If we're dreaming a little smaller, something that's maybe more feasible in the near future, I would love to see all kids have a lawyer in immigration court. Unfortunately, it looks like the administration is going to try to cut legal services for unaccompanied kids this year. So we will see what happens with that.

Just backing up a second here. Could you just explain what open borders mean?

So open border just means that you can travel freely anywhere. And we're not going to put you in jail or deport you. It's just the right to move freely.

So there's no wall, obviously. There's no passport system, there's no nothing. It's just welcome to America, come and go as you please.

I think we can still passports and identify people, but you wouldn't be thrown in jail for not having a visa. And you have to remember, I know that it sounds crazy. People think it sounds crazy. And actually if anybody's interested in learning more about open borders from somebody that knows way more about it than I do. There's a really great organization here in Philly called Free Migration Project, and that's one of their kind of core things, is open borders, and they have really good research on their website about it. But if you think about. If I decide that I want to go to Europe on vacation right now, I don't need to do anything other than show my passport and go, right? So a lot of people in the world basically exist under open borders, but we tend to put all these restrictions on black and brown people of color, people from poorer countries. So if you're like a wealthy white American or European, you already have open borders. You just haven't thought of it that way before.

Well, Rachel, I. I really appreciate you bringing attention to this issue. And I have to say that it disgusts me that we treat unaccompanied minors this way. There's just something morally wrong with this, and I don't know what else to say. I'll give you as long as you want. Just give your final message to my audience about the issue and what you can do and how you can do it, and just promote the hell out of your organization and the concepts so that we can get as much support for you as possible.

Thank you. Thank you for having me and for sharing our work, too. My final message is I think that we are heading into a really dark and scary time for immigrants in this country. And if you are someone that has the privilege of citizenship, to be sure that you're using your voice to stand up for immigrant communities and to draw attention to what is happening. We have the Trump administration detaining green card holders. It's really frightening, and I think it's a test to see how far they can go, how far the public will let them go. And I think it's really, really important that all of us who do have that privilege of birthright citizenship, and I say privilege in the sense of, like, we're not at risk as much as others who don't have that safety net to use our voices to stand up to what's going on right now.

I mean, you just mentioned a very interesting topic. We say this birthright citizenship. That literally must make your head explode. That could go away.

It is really crazy. And I think, like, the people who are pushing for it don't realize how easily that could come back on them as well. Because, like, where do you draw the line? If we don't have birthright citizenship, then who is to say that our grandparents are citizens? You know what I mean? Like, how far back, are we gonna take this? And I know that the executive order had specific parameters, but if they are able to do away with birthright citizenship, they don't have to stick to those parameters. And nobody has the guarantee of citizenship then.

I am third generation Japanese American and my great grandparents came over to pick sugar cane in Hawaii. It's not like, yeah, they had a red carpet welcome when they rolled out into Hawaii. So. All right, Rachel, I really appreciate you, you coming on our show and explaining what you do and the problem that you're facing. And I hope you listeners will support her and other organizations to make this world a better place, A remarkable place. And Rachel, thank you for the work that you're doing to make this world a better place. So I'm Guy Kawasaki. You've been listening to Rachel Rutter. She's the executive director of Project Libertad, and she helps unaccompanied miners immigrate into the United States. In the meantime, this has been the Remarkable People podcast. The people I want to thank are Madison Nismer, producer and co author, Tessa Nismer, researcher Jeff C. And Shannon Hernandez, who's the sound design team, and that's the Remarkable People team. And I hope that you enjoy our work and that you will be remarkable and help help other people be remarkable, too. Until next time, mahalo and aloha. This is remarkable people.