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a film by ALEXANDRA CODINA DISCUSSION GUIDE PAPER CHILDREN 2 DISCUSSION GUIDE FILMMAKER STATEMENT by Alexandra Codina As a documentary filmmaker, I’m always careful to cal 17-year-old, he was reluctant to show his emotions, consider how my framing of a story will affect a move- buried his trauma, and was quickly denied by the Asy- ment or an issue. Never has this been more true than in lum Office. His younger siblings were unable to keep making “Paper Children.” their emotions hidden, yielding different outcomes. Even under the best of circumstances with competent, In 2014, I read a report by Americans for Immigrant pro bono legal representation (the children are repre- Justice on the unfolding crisis of unaccompanied sented by Catholic Legal Services), asylum feels like a children fleeing violence in Central America to seek game of roulette. protection in the United States. That year, over 60,000 children sought refuge, an enormous increase after In the middle of a pandemic, as we fight for our health levels had remained under 8,000 for many years. The and livelihoods, it feels particularly callous to turn our context was horrifying—gruesome gang violence, ex- backs on the most vulnerable. treme poverty, human trafficking, and sexual violence, all disproportionately affecting children. Notably, this My father was welcomed in the United States from included far more girls and increasingly younger chil- Cuba as a 14-year-old unaccompanied child in the dren than ever before. 1960s. He fled mandatory military conscription through Operation Peter Pan, which brought 14,000 As the mother of little boys, I was heartbroken read- children to safety in the United States. Unlike the ing their stories; and as the daughter of a former child children and families arriving today, my father was refugee, I was appalled at our country’s reaction. Rather granted immediate legal protection in recognition of than questioning why children would flee their homes the oppressive regime that he fled, rather than being alone, risking a treacherous journey, our government labeled a criminal or security threat. I want Fernando, sounded the alarm of a border security crisis and and other children like him, to have those same oppor- rushed to deport them back to the danger from which tunities. they fled (for some deportation is a death sentence). I grew up hearing the stories of my family, but it wasn’t While working on “Paper Children,” I was struck by the until I became a mother myself that I really understood unequal treatment of the eldest brother, Fernando. my grandmother’s bravery. If I were in Karen’s or my Armed groups took over their village, threatened to grandmother’s shoes, I too would have done everything murder and rape his younger siblings and decimated in my power to keep my children safe. their extended family. Fernando had no choice but to bring his siblings to safety in the United States. As an unaccompanied child, Fernando’s asylum claim was fast-tracked through immigration courts. Being a typi- PAPER CHILDREN 3 DISCUSSION GUIDE THE FILM IN CONTEXT INTRODUCING THE CENTRAL AMERICAN unaccompanied children arrived at the U.S./Mexico MIGRATION CRISIS border. The increased number of children continues Asylum seekers from Central America face incredible with 69,488 unaccompanied children placed in shelters threats in the journey towards possible refuge in the in 2019. United States—including risks of kidnapping, murder, sexual violence, starvation, dehydration, beatings, in- carceration, and deportation. Unaccompanied children are the brave children who refuse to join gangs or other criminal groups back home, and make the treacherous In 2014, 68,541 journey towards survival alone and arrive at our border without their parents. unaccompanied Though the numbers had been rising steadily since children arrived 2011, the United States saw an astronomical surge in the amount of children fleeing violence in Central at the U.S./Mexico America in 2014. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) reported between 7,000-8,000 cases of children border. who arrived at the border in 2005. In 2014, 68,541 68,541 PAPER CHILDREN 4 DISCUSSION GUIDE WHY CHILDREN WERE FLEEING THEIR HOMES Three vital elements made this era of migration unique: 1. The sheer number of children arriving—2014’s in- Children fled, crease was 77% greater than the previous year. not in search 2. While previous unaccompanied youth seeking asy- lum had typically been teenage boys, in 2014 many more girls and younger children were also fleeing. of a better life, 3. Most importantly, were the dire conditions that propelled the mass migration. While many children but to survive. previously arrived in the United States to reunite “ with parents who had sought alleviation of pov- erty, conditions in Central America had drastical- THE MISCHARACTERIZATION OF ly changed. In 2013, Central America’s Northern ASYLUM-SEEKERS Triangle of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador were three of the five most dangerous countries in Opponents have often incorrectly claimed that two the world. Rather than being pulled to the United factors incentivized Central American children to States for an opportunity, young people were being migrate to the United States: 1) the Deferred Action pushed out of their homelands by extreme violence. for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)—which grants a 2-year respite from deportation and work permits to eligible Narco cartels were the primary cause of the terrorizing undocumented youth who arrived in the United States violence. When the United States pushed billions of with their parents and meet a strict set of guide- dollars to stop the flow of cocaine from Colombia up lines—2) and a supposed lack of border enforcement. the Caribbean, the drug trade was routed inland to the Additionally, by characterizing fleeing children as Northern Triangle. There, children were enlisted—most- criminals, politicians stoked anti-immigrant feelings ly by Mexican traffickers fighting for control over drug in order to forward their own platforms. By turning a turfs—as the cartel’s foot soldiers. Gangs threatened humanitarian issue into a political one, policymakers children in order to recruit them to use and distribute have been free to gut the system unchecked. What drugs, to serve as lookouts and, eventually, to become began years ago as a slow chipping away at 40 years the cartel’s hitmen. Children faced enormous threats of carefully crafted asylum law, has turned into an av- of physical and psychological violence, the murder of alanche these past few years, making it nearly impossi- loved ones, sexual assault, rape, and not uncommonly, ble to seek refuge in the U.S. today. their own death. This crisis sits within a broader context that points to By way of example, at the time, Nicaragua had equal the United States’ long term failure to protect human- levels of poverty to Honduras, but the Nicaraguan gov- ity’s most vulnerable population, which transcends ernment had an iron fist, which prevented the gangs political parties. Recognizing the lack of protection for and cartels from taking over. As a result, the levels of children in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, violence were strikingly different. While almost non-ex- most nations adopted the Convention on the Rights istent in Nicaragua, in 2014 Honduras was considered of the Child (CRC) in 1989, “the first significant steps the murder capital of the world. Children fled, not in toward creating a world in which any child—even the search of a better life, but to survive. most vulnerable separated immigrant child—can be PAPER CHILDREN 5 DISCUSSION GUIDE aided to reach his or her full potential.” Though the law that allows the President the power to stop for- United States contributed heavily to the drafting of eigners from entering the U.S. under “serious threat” the CRC, it is the only United Nations member that has of a dangerous disease—but many of the youth being failed to ratify it. sent home entered the country before the pandemic. According to ICE records, between March and mid-July 2020 more than 40,000 people had been deported. Consequently, the United States government knowingly exported the virus in large numbers to outside coun- tries, contributing to the global health crisis. Inside detention centers, where social distancing or other basic safety/health precautions are not being imple- mented, the pandemic poses a massive risk to both those detained, and the spread of COVID-19 to outside communities by detention center officers and staff. More than 1,406 immigration detainees in the United States had tested positive for coronavirus as of June 1, 2020, though the number is thought to be much higher due to the reported testing of fewer than 12 percent of detainees. AN URGENT HUMANITARIAN CONCERN In an effort to shed light on the “invisible refugee crisis” by following Fernando and his family’s journey from Honduras to Miami, PAPER CHILDREN’s storytelling shifts the narrative from a statistics-driven political dialogue to an urgent humanitarian concern. While the majority of the film takes place between 2016 and THE CRISIS IN CONTEXT OF PAPER 2019, the crisis is ongoing. PAPER CHILDREN invites us CHILDREN’S RELEASE IN 2020 to engage the full spectrum of the migration experi- ence through a heart-centered, family-oriented ap- At the time of PAPER CHILDREN’s release during the proach that honors the survival struggle and resilience summer of the Coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of of unaccompanied minors and their families. migrant children and teens have been quietly deported by American authorities without the opportunity for due process—no day in court, or even speaking to a social worker. Without notifying their families or ver- ifying whether children have a safe place to return to, children have been turned around hours after arriving across the border or woken from their detention center beds to be flown to their home country.