Few Paths after a Long Journey: The Need for a Juvenile Immigration System

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I think you need to strengthen your argument on why SIJS should be adjudicated federally.  One of the criticisms of it currently is that USCIS re-adjudicates the family court decisions and oversteps jurisdiction.  Also, the current federal immigration system is very problematic and I am not sure how this solution helps.  I think you also include references to the Right of the Child Convention and other international instruments around child's rights and best interest determinations.  

I am not persuaded by the Mathews argument for a constitutional right to counsel for UAC.  There is quite a bit of literature on right to counsel in immigration context that I would encourage you to source. Currently USC don't parents and children don't have a constitutional right to counsel in civil proceedings. 

Author Response

Appropriate revisions have been made to the document. Grammatical mistakes noted by two of the reviewers have been corrected. Additional text has been added to clarify various points in response to Reviewer 1 and additional footnotes have been added as well. See new text on page 21. Reviewer 2's suggested corrections were adopted and new footnote content was added regarding defined terms and the application of due process protections to noncitizens. Reviewer 3's suggestions were adopted completely with revisions to the text cited by the reviewer. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see attached word document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Appropriate revisions have been made to the document. Grammatical mistakes noted by two of the reviewers have been corrected. Additional text has been added to clarify various points in response to Reviewer 1 and additional footnotes have been added as well. See new text on page 21. Reviewer 2's suggested corrections were adopted and new footnote content was added regarding defined terms and the application of due process protections to noncitizens. Reviewer 3's suggestions were adopted completely with revisions to the text cited by the reviewer. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Laws Review

“Few Paths After a Long Journey: The Need for a Juvenile Immigration System”

This article provides an extremely thorough and compelling account of the two pathways unaccompanied children have for staying in the U.S. after they cross the border – asylum or Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS).  The author does a fantastic job of describing the step by step (and agency by agency) process of what happens to the child the moment they enter the U.S. till their court hearing where they pursue either asylum or SIJS.  Next the author describes the asylum process followed by the SIJS process highlighting along the away many of the difficulties (and frankly absurdities) that these children encounter in the process.  Finally, the author argues for a new juvenile immigration system modeled after Federal juvenile immigration system which would help alleviate many of the difficulties they described in the preceding sections.  I have very few suggestions for this article because I find it very comprehensive. Below are a few minor points

-In footnote 40 the author addresses the low probability of receiving asylum (for adults or minors).  I would like to see them address some of the quantitative literature in this area that has focused on the reasons why these rates are low:  For example, Refugee Roulette by Shrag, Schoenholtz, and Ramji-Nogales (2009) and Immigration Judges and U.S. Asylum Policy by Miller, Keith, and Holmes (2015) examine the low likelihood of asylum in the U.S. in all cases.  Braaten and Braaten in a 2021 article in Law and Policy titled “Children seeking asylum: Determinants of asylum claims by unaccompanied minors in the United States from 2013 to 2017” focus exclusively on the low probability of unaccompanied minors receiving asylum in the U.S.

-In the section describing the asylum process the author hints at but does not explicitly mention that UACs are not required to have lawyers at their proceedings.  This is covered extensively by the author in subsequent sections but I think it would be worthwhile to state it earlier in the article with the explanation coming later

-I think the abstract should specifically mention the two paths for UACs staying in the U.S. – asylum and SIJS.  Gives the reader a better sense of what is coming

Author Response

Appropriate revisions have been made to the document. Grammatical mistakes noted by two of the reviewers have been corrected. Additional text has been added to clarify various points in response to Reviewer 1 and additional footnotes have been added as well. See new text on page 21. Reviewer 2's suggested corrections were adopted and new footnote content was added regarding defined terms and the application of due process protections to noncitizens. Reviewer 3's suggestions were adopted completely with revisions to the text cited by the reviewer. 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

This is great improvement from the prior draft.