Illegal children who cross border alone find themselves in Chicago shelters

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Staring at the Rio Grande, Karina hesitated.

The 11-year-old girl didn't know how to swim, and she'd only just met the adults who were bringing her from Honduras to the U.S. - the ones then handing her an inner tube. She didn't want to scare her 8-year-old brother who was traveling with her, she recalled.

Karina waded into the water, becoming one of tens of thousands of children in recent years who have crossed the U.S. border illegally and alone.

Nearly 60,000 children came across the border without their parents during the fiscal year ending in September, according to the Administration for Children and Families. Thousands landed in Illinois, where 2,300 kids last year were placed by the agency in juvenile detention centers, called shelters, as they awaited a decision on whether they'd be released to relatives in the U.S., remain in detention or be deported.

Many, like Karina, land in Chicago, in one of nine shelters run by Heartland Alliance, a nonprofit that helps immigrants with housing and legal assistance. She spent a month in the shelter a few years ago before being released to her mother, whom she hadn't seen in eight years.

"This place is nothing like Honduras," Karina said one afternoon earlier this month, sitting on a swing in a quiet playground near the home she now shares with her mother and brother in a nearby state. "There, I had to grow up fast."

The number of children who crossed the border alone last year surpassed a peak in 2014 of more than 57,000.

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