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Federal law protects children from "noncontiguous" countries, requiring they be transferred to resettlement office custody within 72 hours of their apprehension — though the wait to get into a shelter can be much longer. Instead of what is a relatively fast deportation process for children from contiguous countries, a 2008 law requires that unaccompanied children from noncontiguous countries go through immigration court to determine their status.
That process can extend for months. Roughly 1,300 unaccompanied juveniles were working their way through court proceedings in Illinois as of June, according to a database maintained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse organization at Syracuse University.
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