A 17-year-old Ukrainian woman who wanted to cross the US border was arrested and has been detained for several days

A 17-year-old Ukrainian woman is temporarily held by US border guards because she wanted to cross the border without being accompanied by her parents or guardians. More and more Ukrainians are coming in the hope of getting to the United States, reports CBS.

Photo: Shutterstock

On the evening of April 6, 17-year-old Elizaveta, who was preparing to become a missionary in Mexico, along with 21-year-old Alina Dolinenko, a trainee missionary from Ukraine, went to the San Isidro American border checkpoint in Southern California. Unable to return to war-torn Ukraine, Yelizaveta and Dolinenko hoped to move to the US to live with a Marylander who sponsored their missionary program in Mexico.

U.S. border officials are allowing hundreds of Ukrainians to enter the country daily through the San Ysidro checkpoint after being instructed in early March to consider exempting those with Ukrainian passports from pandemic-era restrictions that are currently out of reach. allow other migrants to seek asylum.

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But when they filed paperwork at the San Ysidro port of entry, Dolinenko said US border officials told them that Elizabeth could not be immediately allowed into the country because she was a minor and not traveling with her parents or legal guardians.

“American border guards told them that they would detain Elizabeth indefinitely because she had no right to cross the border without her parents. She cried a lot,” said Dolinenko, who was allowed to enter the US.

A 2008 law requires US border officials to temporarily hold undocumented children who are undergoing a procedure without parents or legal guardians until they can transfer them to shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The law generally requires such transfer to occur within 72 hours.

The law was designed to protect migrant children from violence and human trafficking and was primarily applied to Central American minors, who make up the vast majority of unaccompanied youth in HHS care.

However, the unprecedented number of Ukrainians flying to Mexico to try to avoid the Russian invasion and get to the US quickly meant that a small number of Ukrainian children were affected by this anti-trafficking law.

As of April 8, the HHS Refugee Settlement Office was housing at least four Ukrainian children recently transferred from detention at the US border, a US government official, who asked not to be named, said.

On Saturday, the exact location of Elizabeth was unknown. Sharon Fletcher, a Maryland resident who hoped to house Elizabeth and Dolinenko, said Elizabeth told her during a two-minute conversation on April 7 that she remained under US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) surveillance.

“She just burst into tears and said, ‘I don’t want to be here,’” Fletcher said. “She doesn’t want to be in this place.” She wants to be free."

Representatives from the CBP and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about Elizabeth and her whereabouts.

Fletcher runs Forgotten Places, a nonprofit organization that she says sponsors the Youth with a Mission program, which trains young Christian missionaries around the world, including in Mexico. Elizabeth arrived in Mexico in January to join Youth with a Mission, Fletcher said.

After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Fletcher told Elizabeth and Dolinenko that she would receive them at her home in Maryland, noting that Elizabeth had no family in the US.

Fletcher said that Elizabeth has been unable to contact her parents for months and that her brother remains in Ukraine, helping to transport civilians displaced by the war. The family lived in Vorzel, a city on the outskirts of Kyiv, which was occupied by Russian forces last month.

If Elizabeth is transferred to an HHS shelter or foster home, she will remain under government supervision until she turns 18 in June, unless she is released to a US sponsor. According to the Ukrainian passport, Elizaveta was born on June 6, 2004.

However, HHS generally releases unaccompanied children only to family members such as parents, older siblings, grandparents, and aunts and uncles. The agency can place unaccompanied children with non-family sponsors, but the process takes longer due to increased screening.

Fletcher urged the government to release Elizabeth as soon as possible to ensure she is not further traumatized by being in US custody. Fletcher said she was ready to sponsor and receive Elizabeth.

“To allow someone to sit in a cell or in this institution, knowing that her parents cannot come, she is not even sure if they are alive or not. There is a war going on in Ukraine, I mean all this trauma, not a single person should go through this - that's what worries me, ”said Fletcher.

Fletcher said she contacted several congressional offices about the Elizabeth situation, including Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, whose staff told her they were looking into the matter.

Ukrainian single adults and families traveling with children are being processed at U.S. ports of entry along the southern border under exceptions to the pandemic-era restriction known as Section 42, which is used to quickly remove other migrants to Mexico or their home countries.

Faced with limited legal routes for direct entry into the US, thousands of Ukrainians have traveled to Tijuana in recent weeks hoping to take advantage of Section 42 exemptions. After their numbers appear on a special list compiled by volunteers, Ukrainians turn up at the San Ysidro checkpoint to ask for permission to enter the US.

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Last week alone, US border guards processed the data of about 3000 Ukrainians, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorcas said on April 6. Fewer than 300 Ukrainians were reported by U.S. authorities along the Mexican border in February, according to CBP.

Dolinenko, a young missionary trainee who traveled with Elizaveta, said she is currently in San Diego waiting to see if American border guards will let her go.

"I'm very worried," she said in a WhatsApp message.

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