by Jonaki Sanyal, LCSW-C
The coming-of-age journey for all young people is complex and shaped by major growth across physical, cognitive, and psychosocial domains. The teenager’s work of discovering identity and finding belonging during this critical developmental period is already arduous. Being up to the task requires a baseline of safety, stability, and access to basic human needs. Unaccompanied immigrant and refugee youth, who enter the U.S. without immigration status or a parent or legal guardian, are navigating these developmental challenges without those foundational conditions. Far from home and family and facing an increasingly violent immigration system alone, their coming-of-age journey is far more daunting
Fleeing poverty, neglect, abuse, trafficking, and violence, youth often arrive with complex trauma histories that carry long-term implications for their physical and mental health (Borbon, Tant, & Rosado, 2021; Young et al., 2024; Hornor & Chiocca, 2025). After surviving displacement and a deadly journey to the U.S., they are then greeted with layers of structural violence embedded within the U.S. immigration, education, child welfare, and legal systems. These intersecting systemic harms profoundly shape their developmental trajectory and well-being. For legal and social service providers supporting unaccompanied children, these experiences underscore the need for advocacy that is holistic, trauma-informed, and that considers the full scope of their experiences.
Adolescence While Unaccompanied
Unaccompanied adolescents are routinely subject to racialized adultification in the immigration system, in which they are treated like adults and denied the presumptions of vulnerability and innocence to which children are entitled. As a result, they are more likely to be criminalized, subjected to age-inappropriate expectations, and denied age-appropriate resources. This treatment, a manifestation of systemic racism, leads to an overall increase in risk exposure while diminishing protective efforts across settings (Hlass, 2020). Despite this prejudice, unaccompanied youth remain children, forced into sudden independence while coping with separation from caregivers, community, and culture. Having to take on adult obligations before being developmentally capable, they must navigate complex legal policies, in an unfamiliar language, that are designed to be inaccessible and harmful.
Current policies fail to protect these children from harm and in fact, exacerbate their circumstances (Beier, Ortiz, & Forkuo-Sekyere, 2025; Hlass, 2025). In the absence of any entity assuming responsibility for their welfare, there are vast gaps in institutional accountability that heighten vulnerability to violence, retraumatizing legal processes, and prolonged detention. Following release from detention, an experience which already compounds exposure to trauma, youth face ongoing barriers that obstruct access to stable housing, education, and medical and mental health support (Young et al., 2024). With the added strain of financial and academic pressure, and the lasting effects of childhood toxic stress, the journey of self-discovery becomes an unaffordable luxury (Shonkoff & Garner, 2012; Frano & Tan, 2024). These realities illustrate how legal representation alone is insufficient when youth cannot meaningfully engage in their legal cases, education, or healing with their basic needs unmet. A holistic and trauma-informed approach through a coordinated effort between legal and social services is essential to begin addressing the multifaceted needs created by harmful systems.
The Children’s Holistic Representation Project (CHIRP), funded by the California Department of Social Services, is a pilot project that represents an emerging model of integrated social and legal services. Since September 2022, CHIRP has provided comprehensive, holistic support to hundreds of immigrant children across California. By pairing each youth with both an attorney and a social worker, simultaneous attention to legal, psychosocial, educational, health, and emergency care needs becomes possible. The CHIRP model also relies on frequent collaboration with child welfare professionals who provide critical scaffolding, bringing expertise in crisis intervention, safety planning, and trauma-informed care. The result is a multi-disciplinary team with a diversity of perspectives that is better able to support the child’s needs while also supporting one another – an approach that not only addresses complex client concerns but also prevents burnout (Snyder, Gagne, & Williams, 2024).
A’s Story
The experience of “A”, a young man from Honduras, illustrates the profound impact of this integrated model. At age 14, “A” fled targeted gang violence and traveled to the United States, unaccompanied and seeking asylum. Upon crossing the Rio Grande, he was apprehended and placed in youth detention for two and a half months.
Following his release to the care of an aunt, “A” missed a court date due to his sponsor’s apprehension about her own undocumented status. His family decided it was best if he moved to California and enrolled in high school. However, making this transition without access to language support services led “A” to feel isolated and overwhelmed at school.
Over time, the support of an English teacher and Spanish-speaking peers helped him acclimate to his new surroundings. His English skills and academic engagement soon improved; he began to feel a fragile sense of belonging in the community. That nascent sense of safety allowed “A” to move from survival mode into a tentative place of adolescent exploration – making friends, reconnecting with his passion for soccer, and imagining the future.
That budding progress was derailed when “A” received a deportation order due to his missed court date. Fear of exposing his undocumented status caused him to recoil from the friendships and community he had built. That brief sense of safety and belonging disappeared and was replaced with a heavy burden, what "A” describes as a weight he could not release (Miller, 2024).
Outcomes of a Holistic Service Delivery Model
Teenagers, from any hemisphere, are also known for their ability to persevere – most audaciously when confronted with injustice. Fed up with the weight of secrecy, “A” emerged tentatively to aim for his dream – joining the school soccer team. Forced to confront his concerns about being undocumented to fill out the required forms, he chose to trust his English teacher and asked for help.
She immediately contacted the Community Justice Alliance (CJA), a CHIRP-affiliated legal defense organization. Under the CHIRP model, "A” was assigned both an attorney and a social worker, who coordinated bilateral support for his legal and psychosocial needs. With this, he was able to complete his soccer paperwork, gain access to health insurance and mental health services, secure a work permit, and connect with peers who shared similar experiences. CJA also resolved “A”’s deportation order, securing him Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), a tool for unaccompanied asylum-seeking youth that put him on a pathway to permanent residency with the ability to apply for citizenship. He describes this moment as “feeling like finally putting the weight down”.
This holistic support paved the way for profound developmental leaps for “A”. As the precarity of his legal case diminished, he was relieved of the constant labor of survival, allowing him to shift into the exploratory work of just being a teenager. The coming-of-age journey opened for him, and with it came possibility. "A” dove into his academic and extra-curricular interests, even venturing into theatre and advocacy for immigrant students. By his senior year, he reported a new sense of pride, belonging, and purpose. His advocacy now extends beyond his school community as he frequently visits the California State Capitol to share his story with legislators, in hopes that it helps others like him.
Now spending his time with friends, exploring his passions, and planning for the future, when asked what he would like to do after graduation, “A” shares that he would like to be a social worker. He is now in his first year of college. (Miller, 2024)
Conclusion
Holistic, trauma-informed service delivery models such as CHIRP’s demonstrate the impact of integrated legal and psychosocial support when confronting the systemic injustices faced by unaccompanied youth. When structural harm and trauma are met with coordinated care, support teams are better able to sustain zealous advocacy for young people to not just survive, but to reclaim adolescence as a period of possibility, in defiance of the onslaught of state violence.
Jonaki Sanyal, LCSW-C, is a certified clinical social worker and Senior Program Associate for the Learning & Development team in the Unaccompanied Children Program at the Acacia Center for Justice. Contact: [email protected]