Maria Woltjen on Immigration Reform in Report to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Civil Rights Implications of Comprehensive Immigration Reform on Illinois’ Immigrant Communities
In a report of the Illinois State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Maria Woltjen is heavily quoted as an expert on child welfare protections. From the report, titled Civil Rights Implications of Comprehensive Immigration Reform on Illinois’ Immigrant Communities:
Maria Woltjen, Director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights of the University of Chicago School of Law, raised several specific concerns regarding child welfare protections that are notably missing for noncitizen children in immigration court. She cited concerns at every stage of the juvenile immigration proceedings process: apprehension, proceedings, and ifapplicable, removal, stating: “we think that…these children are treated vastly differently to U.S. citizen children in terms of the system that they face. . . .we have a juvenile justice system for our citizen children: we have child protection systems, and we need to take those lessons and just adapt them to our immigration courts.”