“The situation last summer was characterized as part of the overall immigration system being broken, and it’s taken us down the wrong policy path,” said Wendy Young, the president of Kids in Need of Defense, a national legal advocacy group. “This is not an immigration crisis; it’s a refugee crisis.”

About 84,000 children were apprehended at the Southwest border during the 2014 fiscal year and the first six months of the 2015 fiscal year, according to the Border Patrol. Of the 79,088 removal cases initiated by the government, 15,207 children had been ordered deported as of June, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

While a small percentage of children have been granted asylum, most are seeking relief from deportation by applying for special immigrant juvenile status, federal officials said. And yet, rather than their claims being expedited, 69 percent of the children on the priority docket still have cases pending, statistics show.

The burden is far more difficult for children if they do not have a lawyer — a right not granted to defendants in immigration courts — especially because of the accelerated time frame the government established for their cases. After being released to a sponsor, usually a relative, they are on the clock: They are required to make their first court appearance within 21 days of the court’s receiving their case to contest their deportation.

New York Advantage

By all accounts, there are legal advantages for child immigrants in New York City that do not exist in other parts of the country where they settled in large numbers, including Los Angeles, South Florida and the Houston area. Last summer, nonprofit agencies and pro bono lawyers formed a coalition at the federal court in Lower Manhattan, backed by $1.9 million in financing from the City Council and private philanthropy, to help those without lawyers.