Final Project. Part 3

Running head: UNACCOMPANIED MIGRANT CHILDREN

UNACCOMPANIED MIGRANT CHILDREN 20

Recommendation: To Develop a Program Focus on ABC (Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up) Intervention for Spanish Speaking Unaccompanied Teenage Mothers in Cayuga Centers Long Term Foster Care

Student Name:

Course:

Professional Seminar SSW 79000

Instructor:

Denise Rosado

Submission Date:

Abstract

U.S. appetite for drugs such as cocaine and marijuana has led to massive disruptions in its southern neighboring countries as gangs have vicious fights over the one hundred and fifty billion market for illicit drugs, most of which passes through countries such as Honduras, Mexico, and Guatemala. The gang wars over control of territory and money have led to significant insecurity; parents fearful for their children’s future send them on a perilous journey to the U.S. border (Béjar & Green, 2015). The children experience significant trauma stemming from the violence, parental abandonment and the horrors that they experience as they travel to U.S. The goal of this recommendation is to have an in depth assessment of unaccompanied migrant children including the traumas they experience and the reason for them leaving their homes to travel to U.S. Knowing the history of unaccompanied migrant children will lead to an exploration of implementing Attachment and Bio-Behavioral Catch-up Intervention (ABC) to help the children heal from the trauma. The implementation of this intervention would be focus on Spanish Speaking Unaccompanied Teenage Mothers at Cayuga Centers Long Term Foster Care.

History of Unaccompanied Children

A Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) are defined as migrants under eighteen years old with no lawful status in the United States and who have no parent or legal guardian available to care for them. Despite the term’s connotation, these children do not necessarily enter the country alone. Some arrive with family members and are separated at the border; others are abandoned by smugglers or fellow migrants near the border (Council on Foreign Relation, February 2020). There are instances where one of the parents tried to cross the border with the child and its apprehended and separated because of previous criminal history committed in U.S and has previously been denied admission, excluded, deported, or removed.

Thousands of displaced children enter the United States each year from Latin American countries, traveling thousands of miles without a parent or guardian. They are fleeing from areas of extreme poverty, violence, drug-related gang activity, sexual exploitation and trafficking. Upon arrival, they are detained, and according to immigration law, must be placed with a federally funded agency that will provide short-term care while they transition to placement with family or other sponsors (Cayuga Centers, 2019). ). On April, 2018, an announcement was made about a new “zero-tolerance” policy. The intention of this law was to apprehend individuals with criminal history entering U.S for the first time (this is a misdemeanor) or re-entry after they were removed from the country. This situation caused thousands of unauthorized immigrant parents traveling with their children to be criminally prosecuted and separated from their children upon entry to the U.S.

One of the mainstays of global migration driven by conflict and strife has been children under the age of eighteen years old traveling without their parents or adults. The numbers of unaccompanied minors has grown proportional to the increase of conflict in several world regions. The more the conflict the higher the numbers of children traveling to places such as U.S. In recent times, child migration driven by conflict has taken center stage. However, historically, child migration was part of government-sponsored programs to resettle people as part the government’s foreign policy. For instance, the United States of America operated a government sponsored resettlement program between 1960 and 1962, which resettled more than fourteen thousand children from Cuban families and settled them in Miami. The children were from families opposed to Fidel Castro’s regime.

A subsequent child-resettlement program was implemented in 1975, which resettled thirty thousand orphaned Vietnamese children and settled them with adoptive parents in America. As such, child migration was part of America’s policy in the past with the government choosing to resettle unaccompanied children by placing them in American homes. However, in recent times, the migration of unaccompanied minors is largely driven by civil strife and economic instability in the countries of El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. Also, unaccompanied children arrive from Afghanistan, Iraq and African nations where wars and poverty have displaced families.

There are many reasons that propel child immigration. One of the most common reasons children travel unaccompanied is to seek asylum, in countries such as Mexico, gang members actively target children, aiming to recruit them into their smuggling ranks, forcing these children to travel to the border in order to save their lives (Canizales, 2015). Children also travel to escape slavery, sex trafficking, war, persecution and gang activity. In some cases, children travel because they want to be reunited with their relatives in other countries or to seek a better life for themselves. Evidently, the motivations that drive the children to brave the long and dangerous journey to the U.S are complex. The patterns of migrations move from countries with distressed societies to first world countries that offer stronger protections and economic opportunities. The reception that the unaccompanied children receive along the way and at their destination often depends on the country. In some countries, they are accepted and placed in intermediate homes as their cases are processed while in others they are turned back, forced to seek other routes or to go back to their countries of origin.

Unaccompanied children arrive at their destination in several ways; they may arrive in the country clandestinely, without the authorities becoming aware. Smugglers and traffickers hide the children and sneak them into the country, often after the child’s relatives have paid hefty sums of money to facilitate the travel and ensure no harm (Aitken, Swanson, & Kennedy, 2014). Unaccompanied children may also go directly to immigration outposts and surrender themselves to immigration authorities; desperate and without any identification papers, they may also possess false documents with false identities.

The vulnerable nature of unaccompanied migrant children has led to proposals in multiple countries to create special legal status for the children that will ease their integration in their countries of choice. However, such proposals are routinely struck down because of the belief that they will encourage increased migration. Often the desire to protect the children conflicts with the desire to punish them because of crossing the border illegally, this conflict means that children are often stranded at the border for months as policymakers figure out the right humanitarian approach to take.

The experience of unaccompanied migrant children and reasons why they come to the US can be broken down into three stages, pre-migration, migration and post migration. In the pre-migration period, unaccompanied minors who arrive at the American border today often experience high levels of structural and political violence, coupled with uncontrolled crime (Béjar & Green, 2015). Children also have to endure declining living conditions as well as declining opportunities for work and education due to dysfunction.

According to the office of refugee resettlement, between seventy and seventy five percent of the unaccompanied minors who come to America come from El-Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico; these countries experience some of the highest homicide rates in the world (Canizales, 2015). To the unaccompanied minors and their parents, choosing to leave their homes to escape the violence and deteriorating living conditions, seems like a better option rather than stay in country of origin and risking death. Parents may also be concerned by the lack of access to healthcare, education and employment, compelling their children to move to countries where they can access these facilities.

Several overlapping reports from the United Nations, human rights organizations and amnesty international have identified distinct human right violations that often precede the migration of children into U.S. Human Rights violation such as torture, rape, injury, abduction, and displacement that is unchecked or encouraged by governments often triggers migration. In an environment where there is civil strife due to gang wars, children are often forced to participate by taking up arms or going on suicide missions. Rival factions also abduct children in order to use them as bargaining chips.

While civil war has largely died down in most South American countries, a new wave of civil strife has emerged, fueled by the one hundred and fifty billion dollar market for illicit drugs in America; these drugs are manufactured and move through South American countries. The countries where the drugs originate and pass through often experience vicious gang uprisings as different gangs fright for control over drug smuggling routes; the significant sums of money involved often means that the gangs are well equipped with weapons and are ready to go all out to secure the stream of income from smuggling drugs (Béjar & Green, 2015). Gang activity leads to a rapid deterioration of living conditions. In El Salvador, the homicide rate is 103 per 100,000, one of the highest in the world. Countries such as Honduras and Guatemala also have similarly high homicide rates driven by gang activity. The violence makes it hard for children to survive unscarred, boys are forced to take up arms while girls are forced into marriage or prostitution at an early age; the only option for the children is to leave their homeland to seek a better life elsewhere (Béjar & Green, 2015). One of the highest rates of minors that crossed the border from the countries mentioned are teenage mother or teenagers expecting a child.

The pre-migration experiences that unaccompanied migrant children experience are distinct from the migration experience. The process of leaving their homes and traveling to their destination often takes months or years. Because the children are minors, they often travel without the necessary documentation such as entry visa; this means that the children are dependent on a cast of characters that includes smugglers, well-wishers, aid organizations, religious organization and other travelling companions.

The process of immigration wreaks a significant amount of stress on the children. Unaccompanied minors who arrive into the United States via overland paths have to travel through Mexico. The journey to the United States inflicts additional levels of trauma on the children as they face violence from smugglers and gangs who take advantage of their vulnerability to exploit them. The measure taken by U.S to protect its border often makes the journey into the U.S more dangerous as the unaccompanied minors have to go through circuitous routes in order to get into the country.

Opportunistic smugglers have turned mass migration into a lucrative trade. Smugglers demand pay in exchange for protecting the minors from the countless dangers that they face on their way to U.S such as robbery, torture, sexual violence and assault. The journey is especially dangerous for girls. Out of ten unaccompanied migrant girls that traverse through Mexico, six experience sexual violence (Béjar & Green, 2015). To cover the cost of traveling to the U.S. children often resort to taking up temporary jobs as they are in transit. Families who send off their children also pool money to pay smugglers. The significant amount of money that smugglers demand mean that families often have to go into debt, hoping that their child will pay it back when they arrive in America and begin earning.

The challenges that unaccompanied migrant children experience often continue post-migration when they have arrived at their destination. The United States is obligated to offer humane treatment to unaccompanied migrant children; this is in accordance with the 1952 United Nations convention that laid down rules for how countries should handle refugees. The U.S. also conforms to the trafficking victims-protection act, which guides the treatment of unaccompanied children as potential victims of child trafficking.

When children arrive at the U.S. border, more often than not they present some form of mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder due to the traumas that they have experienced. The children have had to watch people they love die, get raped and faced off against robberies, assaults and other forms of violence in their home countries and on their way to U.S. The children are at risk of anxiety caused by fear that they may be returned to their homeland as well as the intense longing for their parents. As such, it is crucial that they receive mental health treatment along with the health checkup to reduce the impact of the trauma that they have undergone. Additional ABC therapy intervention will also help the children settle in U.S.

Trauma experienced by migrant children in their home countries

Unaccompanied migrant children face plenty of trauma that drives them to move from their country of origin in order to make the long and perilous journey to the United States of America. The majority of unaccompanied children come from the countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador; these countries experience heightened levels of poverty and violence, this compels parents to send their children to seek a better future elsewhere or to be reunified with them in U.S. Once the decision to leave their countries is made, the trauma the children endure does not end. The paths the children take are full of individuals who are willing to exploit and inflict violence on the children. Understanding the traumas that the children experience is the first step in helping them seek healing.

The primary reason as to why unaccompanied children leave their home countries is violence. This violence often occurs due to an impoverished population easily incentivized to violence through the billions of dollars in drugs that flow through the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. People living in these countries suffer from decades of government mismanagement as well as natural disasters, which limit the economic opportunities available. Poverty is often made worse by poor healthcare and education, which limit the future prospects of young citizens. A report published by the professional counsellor noted that over half of the population in Guatemala and Honduras lives in poverty (Tello, Castellon, Aguilar, & Sawyer, 2017). For many children and their parents, there is simply no future in their home countries and the only option is to leave. The high levels of poverty translate to problems such as inconsistent access to food and access of education forces some of them to voluntarily work and not attended school; the poverty also means that much needed medication and access to medical care are often not accessible as well housing being subpar.

The high level of poverty in these Central American countries is often a direct contributor to another source of trauma, violence. El Salvador and Guatemala experience high levels of violence along with acute poverty (Tello, Castellon, Aguilar, & Sawyer, 2017). The three countries lie along the path that drugs such as cocaine take to arrive into the United States. The illicit drug trade in the United States of America is worth one hundred and fifty billion annually, to the people who form the supply chain of this illicit drug trade the profits are significant. The money from illicit drugs fuels vicious gang activities in the countries of South America as rival gangs fight to take control over the drugs that pass through their nations. The violence combined with the poverty makes living conditions untenable (Béjar & Green, 2015).

Aside from drugs fueling gang activity, the violence also arises due to government inaction as well as political instability. Countries such as El Salvador have in the past experienced violent political uprisings that pit a well-armed militia against government forces. Honduras and Guatemala have also experienced violent uprisings against the government. The violence destabilizes whole regions and contributes to the unending cycle of poverty that makes the nations difficult to live in. Whenever there are outbursts of violence in the three countries, the numbers of unaccompanied migrant children also spike (Canizales, 2015). The children are driven by their parents to move to America where they will have better prospects. The children also move because they have lost everything to violence and have nothing to tie them to their homes.

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are often ranked as some of the most violent places in the world. For instance, in the year 2015, El Salvador reported the highest homicide rate in the world of one hundred and five murders for every one hundred thousand citizens (Tello, Castellon, Aguilar, & Sawyer, 2017). Unaccompanied migrant children face the very real threat of death or have had to live through the murder of a loved one. The constant fear for their lives as well as the trauma of experiencing the death of loved ones mobilized the children and their families to make the dangerous trip to U.S borders.

Children who live in the most violent regions also risk being forced to take up arms by the gangs. Gangs are known to target children as young as eight years old to join their fighting ranks. Families who refuse to give up their children suffer extortions, kidnappings, and murder. For many youth, joining the gangs is the only viable means of earning an income in nations that do not offer many economic opportunities. The rampant and violent recruitment into gangs forces the children to leave lest they succumb to the violent tactics of gangs (Tello, Castellon, Aguilar, & Sawyer, 2017). Children who live under the constant threat of violence experience trauma. Addressing the trauma that the children have experienced should be a priority for the border agencies that take in the children.

The high levels of violence as well as limited government oversight in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala put the children at significant risk of sexual violence. Gangs use rape as a tactic to subdue and punish those who do not conform to their will. Those who experience sexual violence have little recourse in seeking justice leaving them open to endless exploitation. Increasingly, the only way to escape the sexual violence is to move out of the country altogether. In our agency during 2019 we received a total of 5,414 children; 2624 of them were females and 2790 of them males. Out of 2624 females we received, 35% of them were teenage mothers or mother to be. After the clinical department conducted assessments it was determined that 15% of these minors were pregnant due to sexual abuse.

Trauma experienced during the migration journey

The trauma that the unaccompanied migrant children experience does not end when the children decide to move out of their home countries. For most of the unaccompanied migrant children, the path to the American border is long and perilous. Many days are spent walking through gang-controlled territories and facing off against traffickers and government agents. Most of the minors who leave their home countries do not have valid immigration documents, this means that the path to America is not straightforward as it involves passing through many back routes to avoid the authorities, this exposes the children to additional violence, adding to the trauma that they have experienced in their home countries (Chavez & Menjívar, 2017). For protection and companionship, the unaccompanied migrant children often move as groups.

The process of migration adds significant levels of stress. The trauma that the children experience has a direct impact on how well the children adapt to their target countries. The common means of travel from their home countries takes the migrant children through Mexico, where they travel overland to the border. In Mexico, the children face additional violence from gangs and other individuals out to exploit the children. Girls, while traveling unaccompanied, are a higher risk of sexual violence. Girls are more likely to endure or be forced to prostitute themselves in order to facilitate travel expenses. MARIA OLIMPIA STORY.

The action that America has taken to secure its border also add to the trauma that the children experience. Harsh border enforcement means that it is doubly difficult for the children to make it into America. Children are forced to hire the services of smugglers who promise to sneak them across the border at a fee (Aitken, Swanson, & Kennedy, 2014). Children often have to take up odd jobs in order to raise the fee needed to pay smugglers. The children also become easy targets for robberies and sexual violence because they are unaccompanied and far from their homeland, this means there is little consequence for the people who take advantage of the children.

Boys make up the bulk of unaccompanied migrant children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador trying to get to America; however, the numbers of girls making the dangerous trip north continues to increase. Girls are especially vulnerable to sexual assault in their homeland during the migration journey and at their target destination. A story in the Christian Science monitor reports on how a fifteen-year-old migrant girl was kept captive by a drug trafficker for several months in order to be his sex slave, she eventually escaped due to a guard who took pity on her (Medrano, 2014). According to a report from Amnesty International, six out of ten unaccompanied female migrants who pass through Mexico face sexual violence (Perreira & Menjivar, 2017). A report from fusion puts the number higher at eighty percent (Bonello & McIntyre, 2014). Many of the girls who experience sexual violence find that they are pregnant once they reach the American border and their health needs are addressed.

For instance, the story of one of our minors, I will call her Olivia for confidentially purposes, depicts what a journey up north can look like for a teenage. Upon arrival to the agency and during initial assessment minor disclosed that she injured her leg in Mexico minor went on to detail how she jumped over a wall that was full of rocks and deep holes on the other side. Minor fell in the hole and broke her leg. By that time minor was accompanied by two male cousins that abandoned her due to her injury and not being able to continue journey. UC was rescued by Mexican immigration and medical service unit. Minor was told that her leg would have to be amputated. Minor begged authorities to deport her back home with her broken leg.

Minor was then transfered to another hospital where she was able to obtain surgery and a leg brace to help mobilize.

In another case services were provided for, a 17-year-old Honduran female. Minor reported she was raped by a stranger and as a result became pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl who was also under our care. The minor reported that she was in a different neighborhood when she ran into a man she only knew by his nickname. This man took her to another man’s house and told her that he was going to buy some essential things and will be back soon. The minor reported she stayed in the house with the other unknown males who gave her a drink and that she could not recall what happened after due to her losing consciousness. The minor stated that when she woke up, the man was on top raping her. The minor also reported that a year before coming to the U.S., she stepped out of her house to purchase essential toiletries for her daughter that was three months at the time. The minor reported that she was followed by a stranger who shot a gun at her 4 times. The minor did not know the reason; but was hospitalized for a week and as a result lost her left eye. By the time the minor arrived to the agency, her journey had already taken about 4 months, was still breast feeding her baby, and was content that she escaped and found refuge in the U.S. due to her post traumatic stress and post-partum depression.

The long treks that the unaccompanied migrant children must complete each day to make it to their destination also causes trauma. The children are forced to walk tons of miles each day to make it to safe destinations. The children have to put up with fatigue in addition to the violence and fear that they have to deal with every day that they are on the migratory journey. Children often arrive at America’s borders under-nourished and in ill health from the physical exertion that they have undergone.

Separation from parents

Another source of trauma for unaccompanied migrant children is the separation from their parents. The children make the difficult decision to leave their primary guardians and to brave the long distance to America alone; just because they make this decision does not mean that it is easy. When they arrive to America, the children have intense longing for their parents and have to contend with deep sadness that makes it difficult for them to integrate into American society. For many of the children, the possibility that they may never see or hear from their parents or family member who they have left back in their country again is very real; adjusting to this reality is not easy especially for the children who have experienced so much trauma.

For some of the unaccompanied migrant children, the choice to separate from their parents was not voluntary, the children had to live through the death of their parents due to gang activity or government instigated violence. As such, the decision to travel unaccompanied to the United States is a sorrowful one and the last hope for the children who hope to attain a better life.

Attachment and Bio-Behavioral Catch-up Intervention (ABC)

Unaccompanied migrant children who have faced adversity in their home country and on the long and torturous journey to the border of the United States of America need urgent intervention to help them heal from the trauma and to learn how to form normal, healthy bonds with their caregivers. According to research, children who have experienced significant adversity often have difficulties forming secure attachment and self-regulating; the goal of attachment and bio behavioral catchup intervention (ABC) is to enable the children to overcome the trauma inflicted by the difficulties and horrors that they have experienced (Dozier M., 2019).

The overarching goal of ABC is to address behaviors that research has identified as likely to occur in children who have experienced difficult situations, such as unaccompanied migrant children. Unaccompanied migrant children may have difficulties bonding with caregivers and exhibit behaviors that push caregivers away. ABC focusses on the parents, enabling them to understand how to interpret the behaviors of the children and how to react in a way that provides the children with consistent care and nurturing even when the children are not reciprocal. ABC recognizes that consistent nurturing does not come naturally to many parents, especially if the parents have also experienced trauma; as such, ABC teaches nurturers how to overcome their natural habits in order to provide consistent nurturing care to children who have experienced adversity.

Components of ABC

Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up intervention assists children recover from trauma by focusing on three parental behaviors. Children who have experienced difficult situations often have difficulties managing the duration and intensity of negative emotions such as sadness and fear. The first step in Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up intervention is getting parents to follow the lead of their children. Parents learn in-the-moment interventions that enable them to assist the children when they are experiencing deregulated behaviors and emotions (Dozier, Meade, & Bernard). The second intervention in (ABC) is teaching parents how to provide consistent nurturing care. Nurturing care helps the children avoid developing attachment disorders. The third component of ABC is teaching parents how to behave in ways that do not frighten the children or appear harsh; excessive harshness can lead the children to have self-regulatory problems and attachment disorders. Parents are taught to recognize their actions and how to avoid exacerbating the children’s trauma.

Parents who have gone through ABC coaching are able to create a bond with their children by providing warm, responsive and predictable environment that improves the regulatory and behavioral capabilities of the children. Parents are also able to eliminate behaviors that are frightening to the child.

In an ABC program, there are four training goals for caregivers. The first goal is to increase the sensitivity and nurturance of the caregivers; this enables the caregivers to respond to the challenging behaviors exhibited by children. The second training goal is to decrease the frightening behaviors that caregivers exhibit. Caregivers may exhibit behaviors that seem innocuous to them; however, these behaviors trigger traumatic behaviors in the children. Parents are taught how to recognize the behaviors that are frightening to the children and how to stop exhibiting these behaviors (Dozier, Meade, & Bernard). The third training goal for caregivers is how to decrease the disorganized attachment in children and how to increase attachment security between the parent and child. The fourth training goal is how to increase the child’s biological and behavioral regulation.

How ABC helps children that have experienced adversity

ABC assists children overcome the trauma that they have experienced by creating a safe environment where the children can be normal again. For traumatized children, conventional parenting will not do, instead, parents are taught how to overcome the behaviors that children exhibit because of the trauma as well as how to provide a nurturing environment that enables the children to heal. Children are provided all the support they need as well as encouragements from their parents that enable the children to develop normal attachment; this helps allay the effects of the trauma and improves the child’s chances of living a normal life after trauma.

Creating a bond between mother and child

In addition to the three training goals in an ABC program, parents also learn how to avoid responding negatively to the child’s irrational behaviors that stem from the trauma, parents are taught to provide consistent nurturing care regardless of the child’s actions (Dozier, Meade, & Bernard). For instance, parents may be tempted to leave the child alone when the child pushes them away or begin having tantrums, this may be the rational response but it does not help the child and exacerbates attachment issues, parents are instead encouraged how to be there regardless of the child’s behavior. Parents also learn how to provide a nurturing environment that assists the child in developing proper regulatory capabilities. For instance, whenever the child exhibits good behavior, parents are taught to vocally appreciate the child and demonstrate delight, this encourages the children to heal from their trauma and bond with the parents. ABC also fosters closeness between the parents and the children by teaching the parents how to avoid triggering the child’s trauma.

Requirements to implement the program in the agency

The focus of ABC is on the parents or caregivers, as such, implementing the program in the agency involves regular sessions conducted with parents to take them through the several steps in the program. Because the agency deals with unaccompanied migrant children, parents and caregivers are individuals who take in the children after they have arrived at the border. The training also involves other individuals who live in close proximity to the child; this ensures that the child lives in a supportive environment. ABC training might not be effective if only one caregiver has received education on how to behave around the child.

Most of the unaccompanied migrant children that the agency handles come from the countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El-Salvador, as such, ABC training will be conducted in Spanish, as well as English for the minors that needed. Also, interpreters for minors that speaks a dialect would be available.

The agency will need several critical resources in order to carry out effective ABC training; these resources include laptops, video cameras and webcams. Video cameras enable agency personnel to record training videos and send them to parents. Laptops and webcams enable interactive sessions between the parents and trainers without the trainers having to visit all the parents. Another crucial resource is employees who are well versed with ABC training; the employees must also poses good interpersonal skills to ease their training and interaction with various parents and children.

The agency will need space where the caregivers can be assembled and taught; this may be the caregiver’s homes or a booked hall where the training personnel will coach the caregivers on how to parent unaccompanied migrant children.

References

Aitken, Swanson, & Kennedy. (2014). Unaccompanied migrant children and youth: navigating relational borderlands. In Children and borders. London: Palgrave Macmillan .

Béjar, d. Z., & Green. (2015). Humanitarian Crisis: Unaccompanied Migrant Minors from Central America to the Us–Mexican Border. The Copernicus Journal of Political Studies, (1 (7)), 160-175.

Canizales. (2015). Unaccompanied migrant children: A humanitarian crisis at the US border and beyond. Center for Poverty Research, 3(4).

Cayuga Centers. (2013, April 14). Cancer research. http://www.cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-101/cancer-research/?region=on

Chavez, & Menjívar. (2017). Children without borders: A mapping of the literature on unaccompanied migrant children to the United States. Migraciones internacionales, 5(18), 71-111.

Cheatham, A. (2020, February 20). U.S. Detention of Child Migrants. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-detention-child-migrants

Dozier, M. (2019, January ). Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up Intervention. Retrieved from Developmental Psychology : https://www.apadivisions.org/division-7/publications/newsletters/developmental/2019/01/biobehavioral-intervention Dozier, Meade, & Bernard. (n.d.). Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up: An intervention for parents at risk of maltreating their infants and toddlers. Evidence-based approaches for the treatment of maltreated children, 43-59. Tello, Castellon, Aguilar, & Sawyer. (2017). Unaccompanied Refugee Minors From Central America: Understanding Their Journey and Implications for Counselors. Professional Counselor, 7(4), 360-374.