Though facing deportation by U.S., kids learn to 'pledge allegiance'

By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama wants to promptly send them home to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, but until they are shipped out children caught entering the United States illegally are getting an old-fashioned dose of American patriotism. A group of U.S. senators who recently visited hundreds of the detained children in Texas, not far from the U.S. border with Mexico, watched Spanish-speaking kids having the "Pledge of Allegiance" and the "Star Spangled Banner," the national anthem, drilled into them in a government-run classroom. "It was a surprise to me that they were being taught American customs, American traditions ... the kind that I would expect to see in a naturalization process," said Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who led the late-July trip from Washington of a handful of senators. "I thought that was troubling because I think it raises their expectations that they will be allowed to stay in this country," she said. Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Service's Administration for Children and Families, said most educational services for the undocumented children consist of teaching English as a second language. He said the shelters usually follow state practice on the Pledge of Allegiance. "In Texas, for instance, the Pledge of Allegiance is learned and recited by children in the program on a voluntary basis," he said. Since October, 66,127 unaccompanied minors, children traveling without parents or relatives, have illegally entered the United States, mostly from the three Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The surge of children making the treacherous journey in hopes of reuniting with relatives living in the United States has brought chaos to the border, stretched Washington's ability to cope with a humanitarian crisis and prompted an immigration backlash in some American communities. The Pledge of Allegiance - 31 words that are part of the U.S. Flag Code and recited daily by many American school children as they face the American flag - begins: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands..." Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, which helps facilitate legal counsel for unaccompanied refugees and immigrant children, was disturbed by the government's lesson plan. "Providing children an orientation to the U.S. in terms of culture and history is appropriate, but making them pledge their allegiance to a country that they aren’t sure they will remain in for more than a few weeks is certainly not," she said. The Obama administration, hoping to discourage Central American children from embarking on trips led by smugglers known as "coyotes," has taken a tough stance. It warns that deportation, not residency, awaits them. "The children who are fortunate enough to survive (the journey) will be taken care of while they go through the legal process, but in most cases that process will lead to them being sent back home," Obama declared on June 30. He also took steps to speed their cases through the U.S. legal system. Those children who end up being deported will take something more than U.S. patriotic verses back home. Collins said that outside the classroom, the undocumented children "were being taught American football by a local football team." (Editing by John Whitesides and Leslie Adler)