During my first class as a counselor, I assisted a 3rd year ESO student who had been referred to me for her mental health. She was a smart and alert teenager, she got good grades, but her mood was deteriorating, as was her attention in class. One day he didn’t come to the appointment with me. They told me he hadn’t come all day and I found that very strange. A few hours later, we learned that she and her family had just been deported. That year, they failed practically every subject, then they moved to a different center, closer to the room where another family member welcomed them.
I remember the helplessness I felt in that guidance office. While the rest of her teachers and I tried every day to do our part of the job, to give this teenager her compulsory education, to support her in her development towards adulthood, others destabilized us. The police, the courts and a landlord took this minor from her home, from her neighborhood, from her instito her friends, took away her ability to care for herself, to feel safe, to study and to learn. In particular, they took away his right to education.
