The CBF and the National Immigrant Justice Center co-chair the Illinois Task Force on Unaccompanied Children. The Task Force is comprised of policymakers, government officials, academics, representatives of community-based organizations and a cross-section of Chicago’s legal community, including attorneys at major law firms, representatives from The Chicago Bar Association, and others who work in the field of juvenile and immigration law. The Task Force also includes representatives from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the Illinois Department of Human Services, the Cook County Office of the Public Guardian, the Cook County State’s Attorney, Heartland Alliance, and many others.
The Task Force was formed in 1999 to bring together people to address the complex and unique challenges this vulnerable population faces in our immigration system. The Task Force advocates for necessary policy reforms at the local and national level. In addition, the Task Force recruits pro bono attorneys to represent children, helped launch a groundbreaking pilot project to provide trained child advocates for these minors, and works with the courts, relevant government agencies and other stakeholders to address systemic barriers so that these children are protected.
The Task Force initially focused on a national legislative effort to overhaul the federal system that is responsible for unaccompanied minors that have been taken into immigration custody. This effort met with a partial but very significant success in 2002 when Congress passed the Homeland Security Act, which transferred responsibility for the care and custody of these children from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (and its successor, the Department of Homeland Security) to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), an agency with vast experience and expertise handling cases involving refugee children. The Task Force also played a key role in the advocacy efforts that helped persuade Congress to improve the protections for unaccompanied immigrant minors when it passed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. However, even after these important steps, unaccompanied immigrant children still are not guaranteed legal protections that Americans take for granted in all other cases involving minors. As a result, the work of the Task Force remains as important as ever to ensure protections for these children.
In addition, the Task Force drafted and introduced an amendment to the Illinois Juvenile Court Act that bridges an unintended but significant gap between federal immigration law and the State’s juvenile justice law. Task Force members have also analyzed how to make state and federal legislation pertaining to immigrant children more workable in practice. The results of these analyses have been shared with legislators, policymakers and others who are in a position to influence both the substance and the implementation of such legislation. The Task Force collaborates with state child welfare agencies and other entities that interact with unaccompanied immigrant children on an ongoing basis to ensure that any current or future programs designed to serve this population are both workable in practice and comprehensive in scope.
For more information on The Chicago Bar Foundation's advocacy work on unaccompanied immigrant children, and how you can get involved, please contact Bob Glaves at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 312-554-1205.
