Maria Woltjen on Unaccompanied Immigrant Youth on WBEZ's 'The Afternoon Shift'
Illegal border crossings into the U.S. have been in decline overall, but the number of children seized by border control has nearly tripled in recent years. Many unaccompanied children end up in Chicago, where agencies are scrambling to handle the load. WBEZ’s North Side bureau reporter Odette Yousef and Maria Woltjen, the director of The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights at the University of Chicago, explain what happens to these kids -- and how immigration reform could help them. Young Sullivan, whose father sent him from China at the age of 14, says how he went from spending time at a detention facility to eventually ending up in Texas, where he will soon attend graduate school.