Anxious High School Students Seeking Political Asylum in Trump’s America
Principal Carl Manalo visited every classroom in his Queens high school immediately after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president to reassure his English Language Learner students that they were safe in school. As a candidate, Trump had famously called for deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants, and Manalo knew many of his students would be anxious about customs agents seizing them from school.
Manalo said several students asked him, “Am I gonna get deported?” He reminded students that agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement need a special warrant before they conduct searches.
“I want the students to have faith in the system,” he said. He passed out flyers detailing immigrant rights to the students and their families from Queens High School for Information, Research and Technology in Far Rockaway.
Out of the total 417 students in the school, 30 percent are English Language Learners, the majority of them from Central America. Some arrived with visas and their parents.
But others, like Fredy Rodriguez — an 18-year-old refugee from El Salvador — arrived by themselves, fleeing violence at home.
Rodriguez is one of four other students from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador who are seeking political asylum during one of the most uncertain times in modern U.S. history for new immigrants.
“It’s very difficult for us, because we get scared,” Rodriguez said. “We don’t know what could happen tomorrow with us, with our future.”
The Department of Homeland Security recently outlined new guidelines for deporting those who commit not only serious crimes, but misdemeanors, such as driving without a license. The new policies also allow ICE officials to prioritize the deportation of anyone officials judge to pose a risk to public safety or national security.
Most of the students come to QIRT with little or no English speaking skills, which has made passing Regents exams that determine high school graduation difficult. English Language Learners at the Queens high school have a graduation rate of 55 percent. And with the political climate, there is concern that these students’ educations will be affected if they choose to stay home for fear of potential deportation.
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Born and raised in the small town of Alegría, in the region of Usulutan, El Salvador, Rodriguez was part of the local church and sports club. He lived with his parents and one brother and sister.
“It’s a beautiful place. The people are warm, lots of tourism,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave.”
But the notorious gang known as M18, or 18th Street Gang, targeted him early last year in his capacity as a church youth group leader.
One mid-January day last year, members of M18 ordered him to meet with their leader. Fredy’s friend, Josué Elìas Rodrìguez, stepped in. He told the gang that Fredy would not be meeting with the gang.
Nearly a month later, his friend, Josue, was murdered. It was February 7, 2016, a day Fredy will remember for the rest of his life. Fearing for their son’s safety, Fredy’s parents scrambled to get together enough money to hire a smuggler to take him into the U.S.
In the last three years, over 160,000 children have come alone to the United States, according to Kids In Need of Defense, an organization that offers legal aid to unaccompanied minors. JoMarie Figueroa, a Spanish teacher at the Queens high school, said one or two new students come nearly every two weeks with the same stories of gang violence, extortion and dangerous trips to the border.
Jose Q., 18, is one of those students, an 11th grader from San Salvador, El Salvador. He left the capital city at the age of 16 after escalating gang activity and economic instability in El Salvador forced him to leave for the U.S., where his mother was already living. Rather than seeking political asylum like Fredy, he is applying for permanent resident status.
Jose hopes to become a police officer like his fellow classmate Dennis Q., who is also from El Salvador. The two students met on their first day at the Queens high school in 2014 and have been friends ever since. Dennis, 18, has been living with his father who is also undocumented. Denis is seeking political asylum after being repeatedly beaten and sought after by the gang in his hometown.
It was just over a year ago that Jennifer M., 15 at the time, made the journey by herself from El Salvador to the United States to be reunited with her own mother. (Full names are not provided as the students are waiting for results regarding their status and in the meantime do not have documents.)
Jennifer, who never met her father, was raised by her uncle and her grandfather in El Salvador. When gang activity began to worsen, Jennifer and her friends decided to take the journey north. She arrived in the United States in October 2015, where her mother had been living since Jennifer was 2 years old. She’s also in the process of seeking political asylum.
In order to win asylum cases at the Citizenship and Immigration Services Asylum Office, refugees must prove that the persecution they faced in the past or could face in the future is due to their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or their political opinion. If their cases are turned down, they must go into court removal proceedings, or the immigration courts to appeal. For students like Fredy, and others at the Queens high school, who have already entered the country and are in the process of seeking political asylum, President Trump’s policies will not directly affect them and their rights. Regardless, the direction of the administration has left them scared for their future in the country.
On February 16, “A Day Without Immigrants,” Manalo said most of the 163 students marked absent in his school were from the English as a New Language Program. Rodriguez was one of them. The participants across the country were protesting the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric targeting immigrants, which has left them feeling unwelcome and afraid for their safety. “I was scared,” said Fredy about staying home for “Day without Immigrants.”
Fear of deportation for students at the Queens high school is not new. Under former President Barack Obama last year, many students were afraid to come to school during various moments. Spanish teacher Jomarie Figueroa recalled one frightening experience. Word spread quickly one day about a white van parked in front of the high school, and all decided it was too risky to come. Department of Homeland Security vans are generally white. “It was my van!” said Figueroa. “It’s a work van.”
The fear and the rumors about ICE raids remind Manalo of a similar scare in early January 2016 during the Obama administration. Attendance then dropped for two days by 20 percent, he said. After phone calls home and other outreach, the students returned.
When asked about how he felt about the arrests by ICE officials in early February, Fredy said, “I don’t know how it could turn out, how things could change. In my case, yes, if they deport me…The truth is that I can’t return because of my situation at home.”
Teachers at the Queens high school are aware of the struggles many of their non-native English students face. “I don’t know how many, but there’s a bunch,” said Roy Kilkeary. “I’m kinda surprised sometimes when I hear how many kids are seeking political asylum.”
The students who migrate from Central America struggle because many have little formal education from home and limited English. Some can pass Regents exam in Spanish, but have difficulty with those in English. “The English Regents is what holds them back,” said Kilkeary. And if the students are afraid to show up at all, they fall further behind.
Human rights and immigration reform groups have spoken out against President Trump’s policies. America’s Voice, an immigrant rights group, pointed out that three out of four Americans favor legalization over deportation.
The American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project director, Omar Jadwat, said the Trump administration has trampled on “due process, human decency, the well-being of our communities.”
Two versions of the Trump administration’s temporary travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries were halted in federal court.
El Salvador was ranked the world’s most violent country during peacetime in 2016. The country’s capital, San Salvador, registered more homicides than any city in the world. The violence is attributed primarily to the country’s rival gangs who fight over territory, kidnapping, raping and murdering civilians. As a result, El Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers were the second and third largest groups granted asylum in the United States in 2015, after China, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit specializing in migration policy and trends.
Fredy, Dennis, Jennifer and Jose, all have family back home in El Salvador. They said if they get granted resident status or political asylum, they’re not sure when they would be able to go back to visit their families. “Maybe one day I’ll return to visit family, but I don’t think I could return now to the crime and the economy,” said Jose. As for Dennis, his two older brothers, mother and grandmother are still in El Salvador. “I would return if I could, if it was a little calmer. But really I don’t think so,” he said.
As for Jennifer, she also doesn’t know when she could go back. For now she is working hard at school. “I want to be a lawyer,” she said, “I want to help other people like me.” Global History teacher Robert Reiman said she’s one of their best students.
On Jan. 26, Fredy interviewed with the Immigration Services Asylum Office, where he was asked his country of origin and whether he was going to school. Because he was under 18 and without his parents, his case was expedited. Others who enter with a guardian, or are over 18, could wait a year or multiple years for an answer on their asylum case.
Nearly a month later, on February 24, Fredy received word that he was granted political asylum. He was dumbstruck.
“I stopped everything I was doing,” he said. “I was without words. I thought he was kidding,” he said about his lawyer, Mike Rhee, who called to tell him the news. He rushed to tell his siblings, including Luis, and then contacted his parents, who are still in El Salvador. “They were relieved,” he said about his family. But he could detect sadness in his mother’s voice, as she worried if she would ever see her son again.
“It was a distinct change,” said Fredy’s older brother Luis, about the moment his younger brother was granted asylum. At 29, Luis is an electrician, Fredy’s current guardian, and has been living in the States undocumented since 2006, he said. “The lawyer told us that they did what they could,” he added, explaining that there was no certainty that Fredy would be granted asylum, despite all he had been through.
At the same time, although Fredy had experienced the sudden murder of his friend, had traveled with smugglers to the United States, and is living in a foreign country with a foreign language, Luis said his little brother really hasn’t changed. “He has always studied, has the interest to learn every day,” Luis said. “He has always been the same since the beginning.”
