College student cares for 3 siblings as parents face deportation

Ramsey Touchberry | USA TODAY College

The detainment of two California parents by border patrol agents has left a college student to care for his three younger siblings.

In an interview with wsRADIO, 19-year-old Francisco Duarte said he woke up to one of his younger sisters running into his room crying. He then followed her outside their home in National City, Calif.

“The first thing I see is my mom handcuffed on a chair in front of my house,” Duarte said. “My dad was in handcuffs in a car that was parked in front of our house. [The federal agents] didn’t tell us where they were going to take them, and the car drove off.”

His parents were detained by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents on the morning of May 23. Instantly, the California College-San Diego student became the primary caretaker for his 12-year-old twin sisters and 17-year-old brother. The four children were all born in family southern California area.

“You can’t tell a college student that one day he’s stressing about his classes, and the next day he has to take care of three kids,” Duarte said alongside his siblings in a YouTube video. “You just can’t rip a family apart like that.”

Still, he immediately began taking care of his younger siblings like a parent. Duarte said he walked his twin sisters to school shortly after his parents were taken away, crying as neighbors stopped to pray with them along the way.

“Everything from getting them ready for school to making food for them, even signing off on their homework. I took them to school like a normal day,” Duarte told wsRADIO. “That first night, we put all four beds together in one room to sleep.”

The following days

In the days that followed, Duarte said he felt lost and contacted family members and community friends for help. His former kindergarten teacher gave him the name of Mark Lane, an immigration advocate and an employee of a law firm, Law Offices of Ruben Salazar, now representing the family pro bono.

MORE: An Arizona family shattered by deportation vows to stay united

Unsure of where their parents were being held, the family said they turned to local law enforcement, who also weren’t clear on where the parents had been taken. Lane says the parents’ location was not known until three days after they were taken from their home.

With both family breadwinners gone, Lane says money was an immediate issue. They set up a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe to help raise money.

https://t.co/X7BKX38gaW If everyone reading this can spread the word it would mean everything to me, we're fighting w/ everything we've got — Francisco Duarte (@frankduarte_w) May 26, 2017

“Our initial goal was to just cover them as quick as we [could] with this month’s rent, food and things like that,” Lane said.

In just one week, they raised $67,695 from 1,870 people. As of this writing, they are just shy of their $70,000 goal.

“We would like to thank everyone for this incredible response. We were not expecting anything like this,” Duarte wrote on the campaign page. “We’ve been so moved by this experience, that we are forever indebted and will be working to also create justice for other people in our situation.”

USA TODAY College reached out to Duarte for comment, but Lane says he was unable to talk with a reporter at such a difficult time.

Their GoFundMe campaign, though, isn’t solving their biggest problem: getting their parents back.

According to the U.S. Border Patrol, they were “subjects of a Border Patrol investigation regarding their suspected involvement as stash house operators for a transnational human smuggling organization.” But in the same statement, the federal agency said no criminal charges had been filed against them.

Lane strongly denies the claim of criminal involvement and says Duarte’s parents had been in the U.S. for more than 20 years with no criminal history. He says it’s likely someone reported them to federal agents as being undocumented.

Arrests of non-criminal immigrants increased by 156% in the first 100 days of President Trump’s administration. Lane tells USA TODAY College he’s hearing more and more from those who have either been detained or have a family member detained.

MORE: How much does it cost to deport one migrant? It depends

“Pre-Trump administration, I would take maybe two to three calls a week,” he says. “Post-Trump administration, I take 10 to 15 calls a day.”

According to a study by Human Impact Partners, more than 660,000 U.S. citizen children had at least one parent detained or deported by immigration services from 1998 to 2012.

The parents’ bail hearing is set for June 16. Lane says they hope to bail out the parents so they can return home to their children. Lane also says the kids will soon be able to see their parents for the first time since they were detained.

Professor Gabriel Chin, a University of California-Davis School of Law immigration expert, says immigration cases are handled differently on a case-by-case basis and immigrants are not guaranteed the rights a U.S. citizen has.

“They’re not entitled to representation at the expense of the federal government,” he says. “Even though it’s a very important and consequential proceeding, they do not have a right to counsel the way they would in a criminal case if they couldn’t afford their own lawyer.”

Lane says their next step is to focus on bail and the legal fight to keep them in the U.S., rather than thinking what the family will do if the parents are deported.

With their lawyer, Duarte and his siblings plan to hold a rally and go before the city council Tuesday to advocate for National City to become a sanctuary city. This would mean city officials would refuse to hand over illegal immigrants to federal officials.

“We were told, in these cases, that nobody really speaks up because they’re afraid of what people will say because they themselves may not be legal,” Duarte said in their YouTube video. “But we want to be the voice for those people, and we want to use our example to raise awareness.”

Ramsey Touchberry is a University of Florida student and a USA TODAY College correspondent.

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