In January, Rosa Bermudez brought home a colorful worksheet from Stansbury Elementary School, meant to guide her “power plan” for a safe, healthy relationship to technology.

But it was in English, and as the 11-year-old tried to fill in blank bullet points, some things got lost in translation — like when she described her family’s media rules as “picking up toys” and “sweeping and mopping.”

Just having homework is a change of pace for Rosa, who before the pandemic struck, already knew what it’s like to go without teachers or classmates for months on end. Before enrolling at schools in Utah this past winter, she and her brothers missed out on roughly two years of regular education while their family sought refuge in the United States.

Along with their parents, Sandra Vásquez and Concepción Ventura, Rosa and her brothers — Joaquín, Jeremy, Jason, and Nixon, now ages 14, 7, 6 and 2, respectively — weathered significant delays and life-threatening conditions at the southern border. Then, when they finally reached the U.S., a global public health crisis left them vulnerable, at the whim of an already unwelcoming country that was suddenly locked down and afraid.

By early 2021, they had no insurance to pay for health care, no work permits to make ends meet. Not even the assurance that they could stay.

But after just a few days back in school this winter, Rosa was already determined to study — and eventually master — the language that everyone else spoke around her. She embraced the near-constant linguistic gymnastics she had to perform, going from English to Spanish, “del inglés al español”as a bilingual friend translated their teacher’s lessons and an app helped her decipher homework.

“Here, it’s necessary to learn English,” Rosa said in Spanish.

Related: Why a Texas school district is helping immigrants facing deportation

The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected immigrant students and, more generally, English learners, who have struggled with hurdles such as language barriers, subpar broadband and limited at-home learning support, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

In more normal times, “attendance is not typically an issue” among the roughly 5 million English learners in U.S. public schools, experts from MPI wrote in a September policy brief. But last spring, as physical campuses shut down because of Covid-19, many of those usually attentive students dropped off the grid at alarmingly high rates.

Meanwhile, immigrants have been ravaged by the virus globally, as they’ve endured much higher risk of infection than native-born populations while their jobs have also been decimated by the economic downturn.

And, for many asylum seekers in the U.S., the pandemic caps off a seemingly unending cycle of trauma and helplessness — first in their home countries, then in Mexico and now here.

An arduous journey

Former President Donald Trump’s administration was just starting one of its most scrutinized immigration policies — the paradoxically named “Migrant Protection Protocols,” or MPP, devised to discourage people from supposedly “taking advantage of the immigration system”— when Vásquez and Ventura’s family set out for the U.S. in January 2019.

Throughout their journey, Vásquez tried to continue educating her children, teaching them addition, subtraction, vowels, painting, and whatever else she could.

At their home in Corinto, El Salvador, the adults ran a furniture business but had been forced to pay crippling “taxes” to the gang MS-13. Relatives had been similarly extorted, and some victims of the racket had ended up dead.

To escape persecution and possible murder, Vásquez’s family decided to join her mother and her three American-citizen siblings stateside. But when they finally made it to the border after being waylaid in transit for much of the year, they were placed in MPP and sent back to Tijuana.

Known colloquially as “Remain in Mexico,” the protocols dumped people with upcoming immigration court hearings into crime-riddled Mexican cities, instead of letting them wait in the U.S. Although the Department of Homeland Security claimed Mexico would provide the migrants “with all appropriate humanitarian protections for the duration of their stay,” people in MPP were in fact largely abandoned, navigating what oftentimes turned out to be life-threatening situations with few resources.

Stranded in a foreign country, they became easy prey for cartel members and corrupt Mexican police.

Asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico have suffered at least 1,544 incidents of rape, murder, torture or other violent attacks — including 341 kidnappings or attempted kidnappings of children, according to Human Rights First.

“People died in MPP. People were subjected to severe violence in MPP. People were trafficked from MPP,” said Alyssa Kane, managing attorney at Aldea – The People’s Justice Center, which represents migrant families.

Victims of MPP have suffered at least 1,544 incidents of rape, murder, torture or other violent attacks — including 341 kidnappings or near-kidnappings of children, according to Human Rights First.

In Ciudad Juárez, a 10-year-old girl witnessed men sexually assault and throw acid on her mother, causing second-degree burns all the way to the bone. When their family sought asylum in the U.S., they were still sent back to Mexico for months, according to BuzzFeed News.

After an 11-year-old child and his father were kidnapped and their captors threatened to harvest the little boy’s organs, the family told a reporter that they were returning to Honduras — the country they fled in the first place.

Related: After a hate crime, a town welcomes immigrants into its schools

In Tijuana, as Vásquez’s family lived first at a shelter and then in a rented room, she never left her kids alone. They spent their days inside, while they waited out five hearings. For their court date each month, the whole family presented at a U.S. port of entry around 3 a.m. and took a bus to see a U.S. immigration judge. Then, they had to turn around and go back to Mexico to wait for their next hearing.

The appearances were mostly a formality: A new, hardline transit ban that took effect nationwide in September 2019 automatically disqualified them from asylum. The executive branch had generally been reshaping U.S. immigration law and precedent to keep out people from similar backgrounds to theirs, whose homes Trump once ridiculed as “shithole countries.”

“They were crafting policy specifically to exclude people of certain nationalities, like people from Central America, people from Haiti, people from the Caribbean,” Kane said.

Vásquez and Ventura’s family was still eligible for a lesser-known, harder-to-access category called “withholding of removal,” a difficult-to-win protection that doesn’t come with the same security or pathway to permanent residence that asylum offers. It does, however, ensure that people won’t be deported to their home countries, at least for the time being. But they couldn’t afford an attorney to help them navigate the U.S.’ complex immigration system in court — a major disadvantage experienced by the lion’s share of migrants forced to wait in Mexico during their proceedings. The vast majority of people in MPP have lost their cases and been ordered to leave the U.S., Vásquez and Ventura’s family included.

Ironically, under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s byzantine system, their family had to travel deep into the U.S. interior before they could be sent back to their home country. In March 2020, the government flew Vásquez, Ventura and their kids all the way to Berks County Residential Center, an immigration detention facility for families just over an hour outside of Philadelphia.

“One of their main goals in staying here legally, is to be able to send their kids to school.”

Alyssa Kane, managing attorney at Aldea

At Berks, some immigrants have found an invaluable resource not available to them in Mexico: lawyers. Kane’s legal team at Aldea, which represents families at Berks for free, helped Vásquez and her family file an appeal. That allowed them to stay in the U.S. while they fought their case.

With deportation temporarily off the table, immigration officials sent the family on a Greyhound bus to live in Utah, near Vásquez’s mother and siblings. Their travel itinerary was relentless, with short legs punctuated by stops that extended into the early morning, like an hour and a half layover in Pittsburgh at 2:10 a.m., and a departure from Kansas City just after midnight.

By the time they got to Salt Lake City at 10:35 p.m. on March 29, 2020, they had stopped in at least nine states during back-to-back bus rides over three days, even as life in the U.S. screeched to a halt amid the climbing death toll from Covid-19.

“Because the bus had people, I was afraid coming,” Vásquez said. But nothing happened to her family, and finally, they had arrived at their destination.

Back to school?

After three lost semesters and months spent inside, bored, amid the pandemic in the U.S., Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy and Jason, Vásquez’s four school-aged kids, seemed to be close to returning to class.

Then, a series of obstacles knocked them even further off course last fall.

At first, with Covid-19 still ravaging the country, Vásquez preferred to have Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy and Jason take class remotely, logging onto borrowed school computers from home with her guidance. But none of their coursework made sense.

“I didn’t know what it was saying, because it was in English,” Joaquín said.

“I couldn’t translate, help them. I couldn’t. I didn’t understand anything,” Vásquez said. “They didn’t either.”

Vásquez decided to send Rosa, Jeremy and Jason to study in-person. (Joaquín, who has aged out of elementary school, was redirected to a different campus that was too far away.) They went to class for about a month, until the family moved mid-semester. Rezoned to a new school, the children were asked about their vaccinations; they needed different shots from the ones they had received growing up in El Salvador.

From chickenpox and hepatitis A to meningococcal and Tdap, Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy and Jason each needed multiple jabs, which cost $120 altogether. The lump sum was a big ask for their parents, who were not legally authorized to work in the U.S.

By late-2020, Vásquez had decided to wait until January to send her kids back to class. She still taught them in the meantime, as she had in Mexico.

Asylum applications have skyrocketed in recent years, and despite the constant specter of possible deportation, children like Rosa and her brothers usually want to go to public school while they await a resolution to their cases, Kane said. Parents are generally very supportive of that, too.

“One of their main goals in staying here legally, is to be able to send their kids to school, and ensure that their kids get — are able to get — a good education,” Kane said.

But the immigration detention centers that jail families often have a similar institutional feel to school campuses, setting kids up for trauma when they eventually return to a classroom setting, Kane said.

At Berks, for example, the facility grounds are eerily reminiscent of a public school, both from the outside and on the inside. Yet families aren’t allowed to leave, and they’re constantly under the control of facility employees who have infamously abused their authority, including one guard who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 19-year-old detained there. 

“Many children do struggle with going back into that system of having a teacher tell them what to do, and having to sit in one place for most of a day, and do what you’re told,” Kane said. “They experienced that in such a traumatic way.”

“I couldn’t translate, help them. I couldn’t. I didn’t understand anything.”

Sandra Vásquez, a mom seeking asylum with her husband and five kids

Kids who spent half a year or longer in Mexico because of MPP are also dealing with major education gaps, she said, and she expressed concerns about “how much that instability and that trauma will affect a child’s educational development later on.”

Then, a bevy of logistical obstacles — from connectivity issues to lack of space and resources at home — make accessing online education challenging for English learners as a group, despite herculean efforts by states to provide hotspots and devices.

“It is still very clear that many students are — have been — lost, that teachers are still not seeing these students engaged, or are not having regular contact with these children,” said Melissa Lazarín, senior advisor at the Migration Policy Institute. “There’s no question in my mind that these students are overrepresented in the group, in the category of students who are not getting, are not reaping the benefits of remote learning right now.”

Related: How teachers are helping students affected by deportations

In Los Angeles, for example, less than half of English learners participated in remote learning each week during the first months of the pandemic, according to an MPI report. Similar phenomena cropped up in other cities, including Sacramento and Chicago.

In the fall — the first full semester affected by Covid-19 — low grades skyrocketed among English learners in areas such as Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland. By December, 36.1 percent of English learners in Connecticut were chronically absent.

At the Granite School District in Utah, where Vásquez’s children attend school, 609 of the district’s 16,036 English learners haven’t logged on at all to the online learning platform this spring.

“Hopefully, a president who’s coming into office espousing unity will be the one to finally unite Congress around this extremely divisive issue.”

Sarah Pierce, policy analyst at MPI

But, despite all the obstacles stacked against them, Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy and Jason were determined to get back in class. In January, the family finally got their costly vaccines. (The district said it had informed them that immunizations were available through charitable donations.)

Soon after, the elementary-aged kids trooped to their new school, Stansbury, and Joaquín started at West Lake STEM Junior High.

In the days leading up to her return to class, Rosa was nervous.

“People speak English, and I don’t understand them,” she said. 

New, cautious hope

As Vásquez’s kids geared up for a new semester at new schools, the White House was simultaneously preparing to welcome a new commander-in-chief whose radically different platform could change their family’s future.

After being sworn into office in January, President Joe Biden immediately took a sledgehammer to some of Trump’s most extreme policies, including practices that affected migrants and asylum seekers. Berks’ troubled hallways have emptied out, at least for now, and one of the Biden administration’s ambitious legislative goals is meaningful reform that re-envisions the nation’s broken immigration system, after decades of gridlock.

“Hopefully, a president who’s coming into office espousing unity will be the one to finally unite Congress around this extremely divisive issue,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at MPI. “But it definitely [is] an uphill battle.”

Biden has also promised to dismantle his predecessor’s intricate web of immigration regulations, but much of Trump’s legacy will take months if not years to undo, as changes wind through tedious red tape and get caught up in the courts.

Related: Going to school when your family is in hiding from ICE

Meanwhile, all eyes have once again turned to the U.S.-Mexico border, where a humanitarian challenge is unfolding as the new administration faces an influx of migrants, and officials are now struggling to process and care for thousands of vulnerable children and families amid the pandemic.

In March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 18,890 children traveling across the border unaccompanied by parents or guardians — a monthly record, NBC News reported.

But there’s hope at the border, too. People in MPP who still have active cases are finally entering the U.S., and the Biden administration is considering a complete overhaul of the existing defensive asylum process so it’s more efficient for future applicants.

For now, it’s still unclear what will happen to families such as Vásquez’s. They’re in a holding pattern, waiting for either an announcement from the new administration or a decision from the Supreme Court about whether MPP, now defunct, was lawful. 

While they wait, they’re building a life in their new communities.

At his junior high, Joaquín’s favorite class is reading. The three younger siblings are on a waiting list for a Spanish dual-language program and are receiving English language development services in the meantime, as well as targeted instruction to help them learn the language, according to the Granite School District’s administration.

Spanish is a common language locally, and support is there for students who need help, said Charlene Lui, director of educational equity for the district. But because Vásquez’s family is new in town, they may not have known how to reach out, Lui conceded.

“We definitely need to do a better job at that,” she said, “making sure that they’re aware of the services that we have available.”

On the “power plan” worksheet, one of Rosa’s early assignments at Stansbury, she was asked to list her “favorite real life activities.” Many 11-year-olds in the U.S. might fixate on sports or sleepovers, but not her.

“Estudiar,” she wrote. To study.

This story about asylum seekers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post Seeking asylum in a time of Covid appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

En enero, Rosa Bermúdez trajo a su casa una colorida hoja de trabajo de la Escuela Primaria Stansbury para usarla de guía en su plan para una relación segura y saludable con la tecnología.

Pero la hoja estaba en inglés y cuando la estudiante de 11 años trató de llenar los espacios en blanco, algunas cosas se perdieron en la traducción, como cuando ella describe las tareas de su hogar como “recoger juguetes” y “barrer y trapear”.

El solo hecho de tener tareas escolares constituye un cambio en la rutina de Rosa, que antes de la pandemia ya sabía lo que era prescindir de maestros o condiscípulos durante largos meses. Antes de matricularse en escuelas del estado de Utah el invierno pasado, sus hermanos y ella perdieron alrededor de dos años de educación regular mientras su familia tramitaba su solicitud de asilo en Estados Unidos.

Junto con sus padres, Sandra Vásquez y Concepción Ventura, Rosa y sus hermanos —Joaquín, Jeremy, Jason y Nixon, ahora en las edades de 14, 7, 6 y 2 años respectivamente— enfrentaron demoras significativas y situaciones de vida o muerte en la frontera. Luego al llegar finalmente a Estados Unidos, los esperaba una crisis global de salud pública que los dejó vulnerables a merced de un país hostil en el que súbitamente la sociedad permanecía encerrada y temerosa.

A principios del año 2021, no tenían seguro para pagar sus gastos médicos y carecían de permisos de trabajo para costear su vida cotidiana. Ni siquiera tenían la certeza de poder permanecer en este país.

Sin embargo, pocos días después de haber regresado a la escuela este invierno, ya Rosa se había propuesto estudiar —y finalmente dominar por completo— el idioma que todos hablaban alrededor suyo. Acogió la gimnasia lingüística casi constante de tener que alternar entre inglés y español con la ayuda de una amiga bilingüe que le traduce las lecciones del profesor y una aplicación que le ayuda a descifrar la tarea escolar que debe hacer en la casa.

“Aquí es necesario aprender inglés”, dijo Rosa en español.

Relacionado: Por qué un distrito escolar de Texas ayuda a inmigrantes que enfrentan la deportación

La pandemia del coronavirus ha afectado a estudiantes inmigrantes de forma desproporcionada y, de manera más general, a personas que están aprendiendo inglés, quienes han tenido que sobreponerse a barreras del idioma, inferiores bandas anchas y limitaciones en el apoyo educacional en sus casas, según el Instituto de Política Migratoria (IPM).

En tiempos más normales, “la asistencia a clases no es un problema típico entre los aproximadamente 5 millones de alumnos de escuelas públicas en Estados Unidos que están aprendiendo inglés,” según escribieron expertos del IPM en un breve informe sobre política migratoria publicado en septiembre. Pero en la primavera pasada, cuando los precintos universitarios cerraron por causa del Covid-19, muchos de esos estudiantes usualmente alertas abandonaron los estudios en cantidades alarmantes.

Entretanto, los inmigrantes han sido devastados globalmente por el virus al tiempo que han sufrido un riesgo mucho mayor de infección que las poblaciones nacidas en el país, y sus empleos también han sido decimados por el desplome económico.

Y para muchos que buscan asilo en Estados Unidos la pandemia ha sido la culminación de un ciclo al parecer interminable de trauma y desamparo, primero en sus países de origen, luego en México y ahora aquí.

Una ardua jornada

La administración del expresidente Donald Trump estaba apenas comenzando una de sus políticas migratorias más escudriñadas —nombrada paradójicamente “Protocolos de Protección Migratoria”, o PPM, diseñada para desalentar a la gente de “aprovecharse del sistema de inmigración”— cuando la familia de Vásquez y Ventura salieron hacia Estados Unidos en enero de 2019.

A o largo de la jornada, Vásquez trató de continuar educando a sus hijos, enseñándoles a sumar, restar, las vocales, a pintar y cualquier otra cosa que podía.

En su hogar en Corinto, El Salvador, los adultos administraban un negocio de mueblería, pero habían sido obligados a pagar “impuestos” devastadores a la pandilla MS-13. Sus familiares también habían sido extorsionados y algunas víctimas del chanchullo habían terminado muertas.

A fin de escapar persecución y posibles asesinatos, la familia de Vásquez decidió mudarse con su madre y tres hermanos ciudadanos americanos en territorio de Estados Unidos. Pero cuando finalmente llegaron a la frontera después de haber sido desviados en tránsito la mayor parte del año, los ubicaron en PPM y los enviaron de vuelta a Tijuana.

Conocidos coloquialmente como “Quédense en México”, los protocolos enviaban a la gente que tenían pendiente una audiencia en corte a ciudades mexicanas sumidas en crimen, en lugar de permitirles esperar en Estados Unidos. Aunque el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional alegaba que México podría proveer a inmigrantes de “todas las protecciones humanitarias adecuadas durante su estadía”, la gente en PPM era mayormente abandonada a navegar lo que a menudo conducía a situaciones en que arriesgaban la vida con pocos recursos.

Abandonados en un país extranjero, se convertían en fácil presa para miembros del cartel y para la corrupta policía mexicana.

“La gente moría en PPM. Se le sometía a una severa violencia en PPM. Los traficaban en PPM”, dijo Alyssa Kane, abogada administradora de Aldea, el Centro de Justicia del Pueblo, que representaba a los inmigrantes.

Las víctimas de PPM han sufrido al menos 1.544 incidentes de violación sexual, asesinato, tortura u otros ataques violentos, incluyendo 341 secuestros o intentos de secuestro de niños, según la organización Human Rights First.

En Ciudad Juárez, una niña de 10 años presenció cuando varios hombres atacaban sexualmente a su mamá y le tiraban ácido, lo cual le causó quemaduras de segundo grado que le llegaron al hueso. Cuando su familia solicitó asilo en Estados Unidos, igual los enviaron de vuelta a México durante meses, según Noticias de BuzzFeed.

Cuando un niño de 11 años y su padre fueron secuestrados y sus captores amenazaron con quitarle los órganos al pequeño niño, la familia le dijo a un reportero que regresaban a Honduras, de donde habían huido primero.

Relacionado: ‘Mochilas llenas de piedras’: Cómo un distrito maneja el trauma que los niños indocumentados traen a la escuela

En Tijuana, donde la familia de Vásquez vivió primero en un albergue y luego en una habitación rentada, ella nunca dejó a sus hijos solos. Pasaban los días adentro mientras esperaban cinco audiencias en los tribunales. Todos los meses, el día de audiencia en la corte la familia entera se presentaba en un puerto de entrada de Estados Unidos alrededor de las 3 de la madrugada y eran llevados en un ómnibus ante un juez de inmigración americano. Después tenían que regresar a México y esperar la próxima audiencia.

Las apariencias eran mayormente una formalidad: Una nueva y fuerte prohibición de entrada que tomó efecto en todo el país en septiembre de 2019 los descalificó automáticamente para recibir asilo. La rama ejecutiva había estado reformando la ley y el precedente de inmigración de Estados Unidos para dejar fuera a personas con antecedentes similares cuyos lugares de origen Trump una vez ridiculizó llamándolos “países de mierda”.

Los que buscan asilo y están obligados a esperar en México han sufrido al menos 1.544 incidentes de violación sexual, asesinato, tortura u otros ataques violentos, incluyendo 341 secuestros o intentos de secuestros de niños, según la organización Human Rights First.

“Estaban creando políticas específicamente para excluir a personas de ciertas nacionalidades, como personas oriundas de Centroamérica, de Haití, gente del Caribe”, dijo Kane.

La familia de Vásquez y Ventura todavía era elegible bajo una categoría menos conocida y más difícil de acceder llamada “expulsión retenida”, una protección difícil de obtener que no incluye la misma seguridad ni conduce a un estatus de residencia permanente como lo ofrece el asilo. Sin embargo, sí asegura que las personas no serán deportadas a sus países de origen, al menos por el momento. Pero tenían la desventaja de no poder costear un abogado que los ayudara a navegar el complejo sistema de inmigración en los tribunales de Estados Unidos, dada la experiencia de la mayoría de las personas obligadas a esperar en México durante el proceso. Una amplia mayoría de personas en PPM ha perdido sus casos y se les ha ordenado salir de Estados Unidos, incluida la familia de Vásquez y Ventura.

Irónicamente, bajo el bizantino sistema utilizado para aplicar la Ley de Inmigración y Aduanas de Estados Unidos, su familia tuvo que adentrarse profundamente en territorio americano antes de ser enviada de vuelta a su país de origen. En marzo de 2020 el gobierno embarcó por avión a Vásquez, Ventura y sus hijos hacia el Centro Residencial del Condado de Berks, un lugar de detención de inmigración para familias ubicado a una hora de Filadelfia.

En Berks, algunos inmigrantes han encontrado un valioso recurso que no tenían en México: abogados. El equipo legal de Kane en Aldea, que representa a familias en Berks de gratis, ayudó a Vásquez y su familia a presentar una apelación que les permitió permanecer en Estados Unidos mientras luchaban por su caso.

Eliminada así la opción de deportarlos, los funcionarios de inmigración enviaron a la familia en un ómnibus de Greyhound a vivir en el estado de Utah, cerca de la madre y los hermanos de Vásquez. Su itinerario de viaje fue implacable, con tramos cortos entre paradas que se prolongaban hasta la mañana siguiente, como el de una hora y media en Pittsburgh a las 2:10 de la madrugada y la salida de la Ciudad de Kansas poco después de la medianoche.

Cuando finalmente llegaron a Salt Lake City, Utah, a las 10:35 p.m. el 29 de marzo de 2020, habían hecho escalas en al menos nueve estados en viajes por carretera que duraron tres días seguidos, al tiempo en que la vida en Estados Unidos se detenía en medio de la creciente pandemia de Covid-19 cuyas muertes aumentaban día por día.

“Debido a que el ómnibus llevaba gente, tenía miedo venir”, dijo Vásquez. Pero nada le ocurrió a su familia y finalmente habían llegado a su destino.

¿De regreso a la escuela?

Después de tres semestres perdidos y meses encerrados y aburridos en medio de la pandemia en Estados Unidos, Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy y Jason ¾los cuatro hijos de Vásquez de edad escolar¾ parecen estar cerca de regresar a clases.

Pero el pasado otoño una serie de obstáculos los alejó aun más del curso.

“Yo no podía traducir y ayudarlos. No podía. No entendía nada”.

Sandra Vásquez, una mamá que vino
a solicitar asilo con su esposo y cinco hijos.

Al principio, con el Covid-19 todavía devastando a la población, Vásquez prefirió que Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy y Jason recibieran sus clases por internet, utilizando desde la casa bajo su dirección computadoras prestadas de la escuela, pero el trabajo del curso realizado no tuvo ningún sentido.

“No sabía lo que decían porque todo era en inglés”, dijo Joaquín.

“Yo no podía traducir y ayudarlos. No podía. No entendía nada”, dijo Vásquez. “Y ellos tampoco”.

Vásquez decidió enviar a Rosa, Jeremy y Jason a tomar las clases en persona. (Joaquín, cuya edad sobrepasa ya la escuela primaria, fue enviado a un colegio diferente demasiado lejos.)  Asistieron a clases alrededor de un mes hasta que a mitad del semestre la familia se mudó. Esto la llevó a caer en una nueva zona y a su vez en una escuela nueva, donde a los niños les preguntaron por sus vacunas. Necesitaban vacunas diferentes de las que habían recibido de niños en El Salvador.

Desde vacunas contra la varicela y hepatitis-A hasta contra la meningitis meningocócica y la vacuna triple bacteriana, Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy y Jason cada uno necesitaba varias a un costo total de $120. Esta suma era demasiado para sus padres, quienes no estaban autorizados a trabajar en Estados Unidos.

Para finales de 2020, Vásquez había decidido esperar hasta enero para enviar a sus hijos otra vez a clases en persona. Mientras tanto, ella seguía enseñándoles, como lo había hecho en México.

En años recientes las solicitudes de asilo se han disparado y, a pesar de la amenaza constante de la posible deportación, niños como Rosa y sus hermanos usualmente prefieren asistir a escuelas públicas mientras esperan una resolución a sus casos, dijo Kane. Los padres generalmente también están de acuerdo con eso.

“Uno de los objetivos principales de permanecer aquí legalmente es poder enviar a sus hijos a la escuela y asegurarse de que reciban —que puedan recibir— una buena educación”, dijo Kane.

Pero los centros de detención de inmigración que encarcelan a familias suelen tener un aspecto institucional similar hacia los precintos escolares, lo cual presenta un trauma a los niños cuando finalmente regresan a un ambiente de clases, dijo Kane.

En Berks, por ejemplo, los terrenos de la instalación semejan extrañamente los de una escuela pública, tanto en su exterior como en su interior. Sin embargo, no se les permite a las familias salir y permanecen constantemente bajo el control de los empleados del centro, quienes de manera infame han abusado de su autoridad, incluyendo a un guardia que se declaró culpable de haber asaltado sexualmente a una persona de 19 años detenida allí.

“Muchos niños enfrentan dificultades al regresar a un sistema de tener un maestro que les diga lo que tienen que hacer, tener que estar sentado en un mismo sitio la mayor parte del día y hacer lo que les manden”, dijo Kane. “Ellos han sufrido esa experiencia de manera traumática”.

“Uno de sus objetivos principales de permanecer aquí legalmente es poder enviar a sus hijos a la escuela”.

Alyssa Kane, abogada administradora de Aldea.

Niños pasaban medio año o más en México porque el PPM está también atravesando significativas lagunas educacionales, dijo ella, mencionando también preocupaciones sobre “cuánto esa inestabilidad y ese trauma afectarán el desarrollo educacional de un niño más adelante”.

Entonces, una sarta de obstáculos logísticos —desde problemas de conectividad a falta de espacio y recursos en el hogar— hacen que el acceso a la educación en línea se convierta en un desafío para quienes aprenden inglés como grupo, a pesar de los esfuerzos hercúleos de los estados de proveer puntos de acceso y dispositivos electrónicos.

“Es muy claro que muchos estudiantes están —han estado— perdidos, que los maestros aún no ven a estos alumnos dedicados ni en contacto regular con otros niños” dijo Melissa Lazarín, asesora principal del Instituto de Política Migratoria (IPM). “No me queda duda de que estos alumnos están sobrerrepresentados en la categoría de estudiantes y en este momento no están recibiendo o cosechando los beneficios del aprendizaje por internet”.

Relacionado: La ayuda a niños que se sienten aislados y ansiosos tras el cierre de las escuelas

En Los Ángeles, por ejemplo, menos de la mitad de los alumnos que están aprendiendo inglés participaron en el aprendizaje por internet cada semana durante los primeros meses de la pandemia, según un informe de IPM. Un fenómeno similar surgió en otras ciudades, incluyendo a Sacramento y Chicago.

En el otoño —el primer semestre completo afectado por el Covid-19— aumentaron drásticamente las bajas notas entre los que están aprendiendo inglés en áreas como el Condado de Fairfax en Virginia y el Condado de Montgomery en Maryland. En diciembre, el 36,1 por ciento de los que están aprendiendo inglés en Connecticut eran ausentes habituales.

En el Distrito Escolar de Granite en Utah, donde asistían a la escuela los hijos de Vásquez, 609 de los 16.036 alumnos que están aprendiendo inglés no han ingresado a la plataforma de aprendizaje en internet en esta primavera.

Sin embargo, a pesar de todos los obstáculos que se han acumulado contra ellos, Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy y Jason estaban decididos a regresar a las clases. En enero, finalmente la familia recibió sus costosas vacunas. (El distrito le comunicó que esas inmunizaciones habían sido donadas por organizaciones caritativas.)

Poco después, los hijos de edad de primaria ingresaron en su nueva escuela, Stansbury, y Joaquín comenzó en la Escuela Secundaria STEM en West Lake.

Días antes de regresar a clases, Rosa estaba nerviosa.

“La gente habla en inglés y yo no los entiendo”, dijo ella.

Una nueva y cautelosa esperanza

Al tiempo que los hijos de Vásquez se preparaban para un nuevo semestre en sus nuevas escuelas, la Casa Blanca se preparaba simultáneamente para recibir a un nuevo comandante-en-jefe cuya plataforma, radicalmente distinta, podría cambiar el futuro de su familia.

“Es alentador que un presidente que jura su cargo promoviendo la unidad sea el que finalmente logre unir al Congreso en torno a este tema extremadamente divisivo”.

Sarah Pierce, analista de políticas en el IPM.

Tras tomar posesión de su cargo en enero, el presidente Joe Biden inmediatamente pareció hacer uso de una mandarria para acabar con algunas de las políticas más extremistas de Trump, incluyendo las prácticas que afectaban a los inmigrantes y a quienes solicitaban asilo. Los siniestros pasillos de Berks se han vaciado, al menos por el momento, y una de las ambiciosas metas legislativas de la administración de Biden es lograr una reforma significativa del descompuesto sistema de inmigración tras décadas de estancamiento.

“Es alentador que un presidente que jura su cargo promoviendo la unidad sea el que finalmente logre unir al Congreso en torno a este tema extremadamente divisivo”, dijo Sarah Pierce, una analista de políticas en el IPM. “Pero es definitivamente una ardua tarea”.

Biden también ha prometido desmantelar la intricada red de regulaciones de inmigración, pero gran parte del legado de Trump tomará meses, si no años, para deshacerla debido a que los cambios enfrentarían un tedioso burocratismo y trabas en los tribunales.

Relacionado: Desde el campo: En un condado de Carolina del Norte donde pocos padres latinos tienen diplomas, sus hijos van en busca de una educación universitaria

Entretanto, todas las miradas se han dirigido una vez más hacia la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México, donde se desarrolla un desafío humanitario al tiempo que la nueva administración enfrenta una afluencia de inmigrantes y los funcionarios se esfuerzan para procesar y atender a niños y familias vulnerables en medio de la pandemia.

En marzo, la organización de Estados Unidos encargada de la Protección de la Aduana y la Frontera presenció la entrada de 18.890 niños que cruzaban la frontera sin estar acompañados por padres o guardianes, un récord mensual según NBC News.

Pero también existe esperanza en la frontera. Las personas en PPM que aún tienen casos activos están finalmente entrando en Estados Unidos, y la administración de Biden está considerando emprender una revisión completa del actual proceso de asilo a fin de que resulte más eficaz para casos futuros.

Por el momento, todavía no está claro lo que ocurrirá con familias como la de Vásquez. Están en un patrón de suspenso en espera de que la nueva administración anuncie o que la Corte Suprema tome una decisión que determine si la ahora difunta PPM era legal o no.  

Mientras esperan, construyen una vida en sus nuevas comunidades.

En su escuela secundaria, la clase favorita de Joaquín es la de lectura.  Sus hermanos menores están en una lista de espera para ingresar en un programa dual de español y reciben servicios mientras tanto de desarrollo del idioma inglés, además de instrucción orientada para ayudarlos a aprender el idioma acorde con la administración del Distrito Escolar de  Granite.

El español es localmente un idioma común y existe apoyo para estudiantes que necesitan ayuda, dijo Charlene Lui, directora de equidad educacional en el distrito. Pero debido al hecho de que la familia de Vásquez es nueva en el pueblo, tal vez no sabían cómo conectarse con ellos, dijo Lui.

“Tenemos definitivamente que hacer un mejor trabajo en esto”, dijo ella, “asegurándonos de que conozcan los servicios de que disponemos”.

En la hoja de trabajo del “plan de poder”, una de las tareas originales que Rosa recibió en Stansbury, se le había pedido que hiciera una lista de sus “actividades favoritas de la vida real”.  Muchas niñas de 11 años en Estados Unidos pueden haber expresado una fijación por los deportes o por la costumbre de pasar la noche con amiguitas en la casa de otra. Pero no Rosa.

“Estudiar,” escribió.      

Este artículo sobre solicitantes de asilo lo produjo The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Inscríbase al boletín informativo de Hechinger.

The post En busca de asilo en tiempos del Covid appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Like many students taking college courses during the coronavirus pandemic, Alexis Lopez struggled with a poor Wi-Fi connection and professors who didn’t offer much support. 

“They couldn’t really help us. They didn’t really know what to do for us,” said Lopez, who lives in Bastrop, Texas, who remembers becoming so frustrated in front of her computer that she burst out crying. “We had to do everything by ourselves.”

Unlike most college-goers, however, Lopez is still a senior in high school. And the problems forced her to withdraw from two of these classes, saddling her with two unwanted W’s on her transcript.

“I’ve never had to withdraw from a course until the pandemic hit,” she said. “That’s what I didn’t want.”

At 18 years old, Lopez is among what varying estimates say is between 10 percent to 34 percent of high school students who take college-level courses that give them a head start on credits, save time and money and prepare them for the demands of higher education.

But the number of students enrolling in and passing these classes has started slipping downward — dramatically, in some places — suggesting a potential decline ahead in the number of high school students who end up going to college. For those who do go, it means that getting a degree could take longer and cost more.

“It definitely throws them off track,” said Samuel West, District P-16 director at Houston Community College.  

Related: The pandemic is speeding up the mass disappearance of men from college 

The increasingly popular practice of taking college courses while in high school — an umbrella that includes dual credit, concurrent enrollment and early college programs — is often a free or low-cost way of accruing college credits, sometimes shaving two years off the time it takes to get an undergraduate degree.

Dual enrollment also increases the likelihood that students will go to college, research suggests. A Colorado study found that those who took dual and concurrent enrollment courses were 23 percent more likely to enroll in college than their classmates who didn’t. They also do better once they get there. Students who took dual credit before going to four public universities in Texas were more likely than their peers to earn bachelor’s degrees within six years, another study found. 

Participating in dual enrollment  “helps students move their gaze from a few feet in front of them to a point further on out on the horizon and start on that road,” said Amy Williams, executive director of the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships.  

Students who took dual and concurrent enrollment courses were 23 percent more likely to enroll in college than their classmates who didn’t, a Colorado study found.

As the United States enters the second year of an economic downturn caused by Covid-19, dual enrollment offers a way for students to get degrees and certificates they need to boost their job prospects, while saving money. Three in 10 students in early college have already earned an associate degree or other postsecondary credential when they finish high school, Jobs for the Future reports.

“When times are tough, students get very considerate about what are the education pathways that are going to result in them being able to get themselves a good-paying job as quickly as possible,” said Alex Perry, coordinator of the College in High School Alliance.

But while dual credit, concurrent enrollment and early college courses could help young people overcome financial and educational obstacles linked to the public health crisis, the infrastructure that makes them possible has been facing its own challenges during a year of shuttered campuses and surging infections. 

Related: Number of rural students planning on going to college plummets

As colleges reconvened for their first full semester during the pandemic in the fall, undergraduate enrollment among students under 18 — a proxy for college in high school — was essentially flat, after a big increase the year before By the spring, enrollment for that age group had declined by nearly 3 percent. 

“Generally if fewer students are taking dual enrollment that’s likely to be a net negative for college access and enrollment after a student graduates high school,” Perry predicted.

The trend hit unevenly across the country, with some colleges seeing increases while others suffered double-digit nosedives. In Idaho, for example, the number of students taking dual enrollment courses through Boise State University plummeted by 37 percent in the fall. Idaho State University and the University of Idaho also reported significant drops.

During a chaotic and uncertain academic year, some courses also “just weren’t offered because we couldn’t guarantee that [students] were going to be in school,” said Mercedes Pour, director of college access for the Maine Community College System.

Even when dual enrollment programs were available, high schoolers grappling with remote learning sometimes didn’t do as well as they wanted to, administrators said. 

Success rates dropped during the fall in courses offered by Austin Community College in Texas when students withdrew more often than usual. Part of the problem is that high school students haven’t had as much time to study after taking jobs during the recession, said Mison Zuñiga, ACC’s interim associate vice president of college and high school relations. 

Related: How a decline in community college students is a big problem for the economy

“We just are seeing things that we’ve not seen in a long time for high school students, that are just a part of what this pandemic has definitely brought to surface,” Zuñiga said.

Other high school students taking college coursework had a hard time shifting to remote learning. Still others were dissuaded from taking additional credits because of the potential impact on their academic records of a bad grade or withdrawal.

Bryan Gonzalez-Alcantar, a junior who, like Lopez, goes to Colorado River Collegiate Academy, wanted to take advanced summer courses last year until his counselor recommended against it, worried that extra classes not required for his degree could affect his grade-point average. 

“It does slow me down a little, since now I have to take them this summer instead of last summer,” Gonzalez-Alcantar said.

The fallout from poor performance can be serious. Dual enrollment students are creating a college GPA, and if they fail a class, they could incur debt retaking it after high school, find themselves ineligible for financial aid because of rules about maintaining satisfactory academic progress or lose their competitive edge for admission and scholarships that comes with successful college course completion in high school. 

“That academic record follows them for the rest of their lives,” said West, of Houston Community College.

Some dual enrollment courses “just weren’t offered because we couldn’t guarantee that [students] were going to be in school.”

Mercedes Pour, director of college access, Maine Community College System

Success rates at HCC dipped from 89 percent in 2019 to 85 percent last fall for regular dual credit students and from 80 percent to 74 percent for those in early college high school programs, according to the college’s data. Male students of color struggled the most with classes, West said, as did students whose courses shifted to a format that could be completed at any time, instead of being offered on a specific schedule. 

Related: ‘Right now is not my time’: How Covid dimmed college prospects for students who need help most

Black and Latino students already participate in dual enrollment at lower rates than their white counterparts. Some students can’t afford tuition, fees or transportation costs where they’re required, or go to high schools that provide them with comparatively poor preparation, according to research by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. (The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

Amid Covid-19, Black Americans and Latinos have also faced disproportionately higher rates of economic hardship, hospitalization and death from the virus. Meanwhile, students of all backgrounds have suffered mental health challenges including depression and anxiety, the mental health awareness nonprofit Active Minds found in a survey. 

“This is a time where I’m not sure people should be taking on a little bit more, and that’s what dual enrollment is. You know, it’s a little bit more on top of your secondary curriculum,” said Pour, of the Maine Community College System. 

Near the beginning of the pandemic, Lopez cared for her grandfather after he got sick and then broke his hip in a fall, washing him and changing his diapers while trying to manage schoolwork. 

When she was at home and had access to a vehicle over the last year, she would often drive to a library or parking lot, then lock herself inside her car for reliable Wi-Fi. People weren’t wearing masks inside buildings, she said, and she preferred to study alone. 

“I just wanted my year to be better,” she said. “I just wanted to go to school.” 

This story about dual enrollment was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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