Print Issue: October 3, 2002

Fund-raiser To Help Program For Juvenile Immigrants

By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer

ATLANTA - Catholic Social Services immigration program on Nov. 16 will hold a 5-K road race and 1-mile fun-walk at 8:30 a.m. in Kennesaw as a fund-raiser to benefit their work in partnership with the Atlanta Bar Association to represent detained juveniles. "Scott's Sprint" is being held in memory of Scott Starratt, a beloved Catholic juvenile deportation program officer who died in a car accident in 2001.

Sue Colussy, director of the CSS immigration program, worked with Starratt, the Immigration and Naturalization Service's first juvenile detention officer, and remembers him as "exactly the right person" for his job. "He really cared about the kids and did a wonderful job."

CSS works to represent immigrants housed through the Hope Program at the INS facility in Zebulon, while attending school. Many have been smuggled into the United States by parents to repay a family's debt by working in sweatshops, restaurants or as prostitutes, and are often unaccompanied minors or children of undocumented, illegal aliens.

Colussy interviews youth to see how she can help them if they want to stay. "Some of the kids just want to go home . . . particularly the Mexicans, 14- or 15-year-old kids. They think it's a big adventure - and get here and think maybe I should go home to mom."

Among the saddest cases CSS represents are with the Chinese children smuggled in. One pretty Chinese girl was smuggled over here by boat, likely for prostitution, where CSS volunteer attorney Bob Marshall helped get her special immigrant juvenile status and medical care. She earned top grades in high school and now is a freshman at Mercer University.

"The parents pay an amazing amount of money to the smugglers to bring them in . . . And the kids are expected to work that off here because if they don't the Chinese 'snake heads' will then go after the family in China," Colussy said.

While it's been doing detention work for 20 years, CSS, in partnership with the Latin American Association, the Georgia Bar Foundation and Pan-Asian Community Services, initiated this year another detention project. In this project, CSS attorney Kerry McGrath provides education, resources and help getting legal representation to adults without documentation being detained in Georgia INS facilities. In Georgia there are now more than 500 people in detention, many of whom are seeking asylum. McGrath, formerly with Atlanta Legal Aid's Hispanic project and southeastern director of Amnesty International, goes to jails throughout the area where INS detainees are held until they're given permission to stay or deported. She makes presentations about detainees' legal rights and gives them self-help material on filling out immigration applications.

CSS helps especially vulnerable immigrants like those seeking asylum and with mental health problems to get a pro-bono attorney. Colussy noted the project helps the INS as well, as some detainees come to realize that they can't stay and don't waste time in court. McGrath "has got a good blend of human rights and advocacy experience as well as in the law. So she's been really effective in this position in trying to make sure people understand their rights and have full access to representation, whatever they need to make their cases . . . It helps them, their families, the court system, so everybody wins when it happens."

"This is a way for the three of us (agencies) to try to address the need," Colussy said. "It's something we have to do more of. Since 1996 everybody who comes to the airport seeking asylum must be detained and it's real hard to get them paroled after Sept. 11. And anybody who commits a crime must be detained pending immigration outcome. A lot of these guys don't understand their rights, they don't understand what's necessary and they don't even understand they probably ought to get a lawyer," Colussy said. "We're doing our best to educate the people who are going through the process. I bet you one out of every 25 or 30 people we talk to turns out to be a U.S. citizen" who is not allowed to be deported.

Colussy is grateful the program received a new $30,000 grant from the Georgia Bar Foundation for the detention work and also hopes to receive new funding from the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, one of the two leading organizations involved in detention advocacy.

For information on the race visit www.silvercomet10k.com or call CSS at (404) 881-6571. To register on-line visit www.active.com.