Some of the summer’s biggest news headlines focused on the surge of children from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras who, fleeing widespread violence and extreme poverty, have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to seek refuge in the United States.¹ The border crisis has sparked a highly politicized debate, with compromise solutions shifting steadily to the right. The most recent bipartisan proposal would, in many cases, require detention of minors (in violation of the 1997Flores v. Reno settlement requiring the release of migrant children, when possible, to relatives or foster care) and result in rapid deportations without due process.

Within this contemporary context, Shani King’s Alone and Unrepresented: A Call to Congress to Provide Counsel for Unaccompanied Minors, provides a fresh perspective on the issue. King argues that three constellations of international and regional human rights standards—children’s rights, immigrants’ rights, and the right to civil counsel—should be interpreted together to provide the right to free legal counsel for unaccompanied minors in immigration proceedings. King offers an extremely helpful collection of international and regional standards on these rights, as well as comparative examples from countries that provide representation to unaccompanied minors facing immigration proceedings. Congress, he concludes, should likewise enact legislation guaranteeing legal representation to unaccompanied minors. King’s article is thought-provoking and practically useful, and it can serve as a source of persuasive international authority to support recent proposals and lawsuits calling for constitutional due process rights of unaccompanied minors.

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