The Board of Aldermen voted unanimously on Tuesday to welcome child refugees and their sponsor families to Carrboro.

Sarah Preston, policy director with the ACLU of North Carolina, thanked the board for passing the resolution, which is the first of its kind in the state.

“In doing so you have recognized that these children risk so much to come here to be reunited with their family or to be placed with caregivers, add that we should protect them from the conditions that they’re fleeing,” said Preston.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimates that as many as 69,000 unaccompanied minors have sought to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in the past year and a half, fleeing violence in Central America.

Children who are apprehended at the border are often placed with relatives or sponsor families while awaiting deportation hearings. More than 1,400 children have been relocated to North Carolina since July, but in some cases they’ve met with harsh community opposition.

In response, Carrboro leaders authorized the town manger to identify resources to welcome immigrant children to the area and support them once they’re here.

They also called on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system to provide access to public education regardless of a child’s immigration status.

George Eppsteiner is a staff attorney at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. He emphasized that access to education is guaranteed by law.

“There is a U.S Supreme Court Case, Plyler v. Doe, that expressly says that immigration status has no bearing for a child’s right to education in the United States,” Eppsteiner told the board. “There has been, unfortunately, a negative conversation started by other local governments that have been discouraging these children from coming to their counties and saying that they would be a burden on their schools. But the truth is, these children have a right to be in the school system.”

The Board will forward the resolution on to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education and receive a report on the manager’s efforts by the end of January.

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