CNN documentary features Miami immigrant

Marta was 13 years old when she left her Central American homeland and crossed the Rio Grande in Texas without knowing how to swim -- all in a desperate bid to reunite with her mother who had left her behind with her grandmother while she sought work in the United States.

Once here, Marta -- not her real name -- was detained by immigration authorities who locked her up at Boystown, a facility in Miami-Dade for undocumented immigrant children in deportation proceedings.

Eventually freed and given a visa, Marta and her dramatic story is scheduled to be featured Thursday night on CNN's series Latino in America hosted by Soledad O'Brien. The segment on Marta is scheduled for 9 p.m., according to the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, the Miami-based immigrant legal services outfit that represents Marta.

``Like Marta, each child who arrives here brings a unique and often heart-wrenching story,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. ``Yet rather than being welcomed they encounter a complex, bewildering and frightening system.

``Many children are quickly removed without regard for what danger abusive parents, persecution by gangs, life on the streets, might await back home. Our hope is that in the near future they will have the right to a free attorney so they at least have a fighting chance to win their case.''

Marta is one of thousands of undocumented children in the United States.

The Pew Hispanic Center, in a 2006 report, estimated the number of undocumented children in the United States at 1.8 million. Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center estimates that more than 7,000 unaccompanied children a year end up in immigration custody, with more than half having no legal representation in deportation proceedings.

The organization represents about 400 of these children each year and Marta is one of its clients. The group did not identify the teenager by her real name or her country of origin partly because of a judge's determination that she had been abused, abandoned or neglected by her family.

Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center outlined Marta's story in a statement sent to El Nuevo Herald.

Her father abandoned the family when she was a child and when she turned seven her mother left for the United States, leaving Marta with her grandmother.

Missing her mother, Marta set off on her own for the United States when she was 13. But once here, the relationship with her mother didn't work out and Marta was picked up by immigration authorities who placed her in Boystown and sought to return her to her country.

With the help of Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center attorney Michelle Abarca and attorneys from the Immigrant Children's Justice Clinic at Florida International University, Marta was released from Boystown in July and granted a special immigrant juvenile visa that put her on the path to permanent residency.

Marta became friends with Lissette Alvarez, a Cuban-American singer who was a Pedro Pan child in the 1960s. Alvarez is married to exile singer and fellow Pedro Pan child Willy Chirino, Both are also featured in the documentary, as is former Sen. Mel Martinez, also Pedro Pan.

Marta turned 16 in July and wants to become a journalist, Little said.

source