Welcoming the Stranger: Refuge for the Refugees
Welcoming the Stranger: Refuge for the Refugees
Posted on Aug 7, 2014
By Bill Boyarsky
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A group of migrants from Honduras and El Salvador who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border are stopped in Granjeno,
Texas, in June. AP/Eric Gay [/font]
A long and dangerous journey brings teenage Central American refugees to a community health center in South Los Angeles where pediatricians, psychologists and social workers treat them for post-traumatic stress disorder. In their native lands and during their treks to the United States, they have been victims of rapes, kidnapping, beatings and other horrors inflicted on them.
But this welcoming clinic could be just another stop in their travels. If President Barack Obama and the rest of official Washington does not grant them legal refugee status, they will probably be deported back to the countries from which they fled.
Hoping to find out what happens to the children once they arrive in the United States, I visited the health center, St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, which runs a network of clinics serving the poor in a wide area of South Los Angeles.
Los Angeles, with a large population from the Central American nations of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, is a destination for many of the 57,500 unaccompanied young people seeking refuge in the United States who have been apprehended since October. St. John’s, with its physical and mental care programs, serves the Central American community among others in South L.A.’s predominantly Latino and African-American population.
More:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/welcoming_the_stranger_refuge_for_the_refugees_20140807
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