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A year on, children caught on border struggle to stay, adapt

Honduras native Dunia Bueso, with her son Joshua Tinoco in Los Angeles, is fighting an effort by US officials to deport the 1-year-old even though she is eligible for a green card. Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — A wide-eyed, restless 1-year-old, Joshua Tinoco faces the prospect of deportation to his native Honduras, one of tens of thousands of children who arrived at the US-Mexico border last year.

While his teenage mother has been allowed to stay in the United States and seek a green card under a federal program for abused, abandoned, and neglected children, Joshua has been classified as an enforcement priority by immigration prosecutors, his lawyer said.

‘‘I fought so much for him to be here with me and now they yank him from my hands,’’ said Dunia Bueso, the boy’s mother, now 18. ‘‘How is the child going to go there alone, and with no one to take care of him?’’

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Many of the children who arrived from Central America a year ago still have cases churning through the immigration courts. Those fleeing gang violence and domestic strife have applied for asylum or the government’s program for abandoned children, and are waiting for an answer.

Those who have won the right to stay still face challenges in reuniting with family they haven’t seen in years, attending school in a foreign language, and coping with the trauma they fled or debts owed to relatives or the smugglers who brought them.

More than 57,000 children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras arrived on the border in the last fiscal year, and since then another 18,000, government statistics show. Immigration courts have fast-tracked the cases in a bid to stem a growing backlog.

It’s difficult, however, to know how many will be allowed to stay; roughly 6,200 of the children who arrived since last July have been issued deportation orders, mostly for failing to attend court, but just as many asylum applications were filed by children between October and March.

Immigrant advocates fear that too many children are hard pressed to find lawyers, and say that many are bona fide asylum-seekers fleeing gang violence and rape. But border enforcement supporters doubt those given deportation orders will be sent home, as the Obama administration would face political backlash, especially when their family is here.

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‘‘Once the kids were let into the United States, the game was up,’’ said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which wants more limits on immigration.

Bueso can’t believe the United States would send her son somewhere no one will care for him; Joshua’s father is not involved in his life, she said, and her grandmother is ill.

While busing through Mexico with her infant son was difficult, Bueso said, her future was looking up now that she can stay. She is living with her uncle in a Los Angeles neighborhood lined with liquor stores and bail bond businesses, and attending school for the first time since she was 10.

While legal status is a huge relief for many of the children, it doesn’t solve all of their problems, especially those running from memories of violence.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles, another teen relishes her newfound safety from the drug traffickers who abducted her on her way home from school in Guatemala at age 16, held her for weeks in the forest, and repeatedly raped her until a ransom secured her release. She now has asylum, but sleeps no more than two hours at a time each night due to near-constant nightmares, making it difficult to focus in school.

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‘‘I remember something, and my dreams kill me,’’ she said. The Associated Press does not name sexual -assault victims.

Children reuniting with family they haven’t seen in years, and those staying with distant relatives or family friends who expect them to pay their way, may have a hard time adjusting. Some teens strike out on their own or may wind up in a youth shelter.

In Southern California, Marvin Velasco, now 15, was kicked out of a family friend’s home after the man didn’t want to feed him. The Guatemalan teen, who arrived on the border last fall after his parents took him out of school and sent him to work selling clothes, sought help from a local church, and a woman there took him in.

The US government agency that screens sponsors before releasing children to their custody doesn’t track how often family relationships break down. But officials recently started a hot line for children to call if they run into in trouble or have nowhere to stay.

Immigration lawyers say they expect more rulings on children’s deportation cases this summer and fall, but are unsure whether that will mean more children returning to their home countries.

So far this fiscal year, the agency has sent 1,325 unaccompanied children, mostly boys in their mid- or late teens, back to their home countries, government statistics show. Most were in the government’s custody since arriving here, or asked to go home, officials said, adding that younger children usually traveled with a teen parent or elder sibling.

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More than 95 percent of the children who arrived on the border last fiscal year were released to family or other sponsors, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

So were Joshua and his mother, who were flown to California after a few weeks at a Texas shelter. In June, the year-old boy’s lawyer asked an immigration judge to put his case on hold, especially because Bueso can seek a green card for him in a few years.

For now, Bueso and her uncle must keep going to immigration court hearings to determine the boy’s fate. Joshua, who refused to sit still during his last court appearance, will be allowed to stay home.