Signal Tribune: Event connects immigrant children once held at Long Beach Convention Center to lawyers and resources
BY KRISTEN FARRAH NAEEM, STAFF WRITER
Now reunited with their families, the immigrant children once held at the Long Beach Convention Center were invited to “Welcome With Dignity Day” hosted by Immigrant Defenders Law Center at Shoreline Aquatic Park on Saturday, Aug. 28.
The children are held by Customs and Border Patrol, often for longer than legally allowed, before eventually being brought to facilities such as the one operated within the Long Beach Convention center from April to July 2021.
While the facility at the convention center was in operation, local immigrant rights groups advocated that the children should instead be held in small-scale houses operated by nonprofits, rather than large centers.
“This was an emergency situation where unfortunately that was not possible,” Toczylowski told the Signal Tribune. “But it’s always the ideal setting for kids to be in smaller home-like shelters.”
Toczylowski said that the priority was to get the children out of border patrol custody, where multiple media outlets showed footage of overcrowded cages with children sleeping on floors in CBP facilities near the border.
“Of course no child should ever be sleeping in a convention center,” Toczylowski said. “But if it has to be done in an emergency situation we’re really proud of the work that UCLA Medical did, [and] the City of Long Beach.”
State Senator Lena Gonzalez also spoke at the event and advocated a bill she brought to the California legislature, SB 452, which would create a new Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to help immigrants integrate themselves in California.
According to Gonzalez, an Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs would “ensure that we have a centralized voice, not just at the state level but regionally and locally, so we can ensure that all immigrant communities and families have resources that they need.”
Multiple organizations set up booths within Shoreline Aquatic Park, to help the children and their families access resources available to them, including the Guatemalan Consulate of Los Angeles, the L.A. County Office of Immigrant Affairs, the Department of Health, UCLA Medical Center and more.
“I believe in opening the doors, and saying, ‘Welcome to our family,'” Vice Mayor Rex Richardson told the crowd. “And as a part of that family, we are here to support you, to provide you love and support, to embrace you here in our Long Beach community, our greater Southern California community.”
Families at the event were also given free food, backpacks and toys.
A Know-Your-Rights seminar was also held in Spanish so that families could be aware of what to expect and how to prepare for the children’s upcoming immigration cases.
“Welcome to Long Beach. Welcome to California. Welcome to the United States,” Toczylowski said to the families.