Girl Scout troop for young migrants offers haven in New York

By Kate LinthicumStaff Writer

Photography by

Marcus Yam

Aug. 20, 2024 3 AM PT

NEW YORK — Valentina Guaman, 12, raised three fingers in the air and recited an oath in Spanish.

On my honor, I will try

To serve my community and my country

To help people at all times

And to live by the Girl Scout Law.

Women talk at a table as girls work on craft projects. On a brick wall, a colorful banner reads "Girl Scouts Troop 6000."

A girl sits in a chair and gazes at the floor.

It had been a year and a half since Valentina and her family had fled Ecuador — trudging through a dangerous, muddy jungle to escape South America, dodging authorities in Mexico and spending cold nights in detention on the U.S. border, where immigration agents confiscated the beloved stuffed animal, Stitch, that her father gave her on her fifth birthday.

Life in New York City, where the family ended up, hadn’t been much easier. Her parents struggled to find work and the family bounced between migrant shelters and slept for a time on the sidewalk in Times Square. Valentina longed for her friends, her cats and her two older siblings back home.

But she looked forward to Thursdays, when she and other members of Girl Scout Troop 6000 would meet and — for a few hours, at least — just get to be girls.

“I feel like it’s my second home,” Valentina said. “And that they’re my second family.”

Kids play on a carpeted floor as adults sit in chairs in an oval room.

Troop 6000 is unlike any other Girl Scout group in the country.

It was launched in 2017 to serve families living in temporary housing in the New York City shelter system. Two years ago, the troop expanded to serve girls residing in an emergency migrant shelter opened to help house large numbers of asylum seekers arriving in the city.

The troop introduced the young migrants to a longtime staple of American girlhood, teaching them lessons in civics and community service — and the art of selling Samoas, Thin Mints and Tagalongs. And it offered a haven in a chaotic metropolis where asylum seekers had become the target of a heated political discourse.

More than 200,000 asylum seekers have come to New York City since the spring of 2022. Some arrived on buses sent by Republican leaders in Texas and Arizona. Others journeyed on their own, drawn in part by a local policy that requires New York to provide housing to migrants. Some spent their first days or weeks in New York connecting with city services at a former hotel converted into a welcoming and processing center for migrants.

People walk under scaffolding on a city sidewalk.

Local officials had complained about the costs of housing asylum seekers, with Mayor Eric Adams saying the cost — about $388 per family per day — could “destroy New York City.”

The place where Valentina and her family were staying, off and on for the last year, was a 27-story hotel in bustling Midtown Manhattan that the city was renting to use as a shelter. Her parents didn’t want her hanging outside in one of New York’s most chaotic neighborhoods. And so most evenings they sat quietly on their respective beds, eating boxed dinners provided by the city and watching Spanish-language news.

A woman holds her hands to her face as she sits on a bed.

A girl and a woman walk into a room as sunlight blasts through a window.

But Thursdays were different. That’s when Valentina would don a Girl Scout T-shirt and take an elevator to the bottom floor.

“Hola, princesa!” one of the troop leaders greeted her one night as she walked into a room decorated with colorful posters.

Another leader, Evelyn Santiago, wrapped her in a bear hug and steered her to a table overflowing with snacks and art supplies.

The first time Valentina came to a meeting, drawn by the promotional posters that Girl Scout leaders had put in hallways of the shelter, she was so shy she barely spoke.

But on this evening, Valentina chatted with friends about school and piped up when leaders asked the girls how they were feeling, saying she felt nervous about upcoming exams. “You’re going to do great,” Santiago assured her.

If there was anybody who knew what Valentina and the other girls were going through, it was Santiago, who was born in Guatemala in the 1970s and migrated to New York as a child.

“I also came here when I was very young,” Santiago told the girls. “I remember being in class where they laughed at me. And I remember that feeling of not belonging.”

A woman holds a cellphone as girls look at the screen.

“I want to be here to support you, to let you know that even in this new, big world here in New York that looks so dreadful, we can conquer it with confidence, with character and with courage,” she said.

The Scouts have adapted their traditional curriculum to help acclimate young migrants to life in New York. The girls earn traditional badges, but also are coached on how to navigate the city’s subway system and taught how local government is organized. Selling boxes of Girl Scout cookies helps them learn math and get acquainted with American currency.

The troop has taken field trips to Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge and to a Colombian restaurant in Queens where the girls sang along to Shakira. It’s not uncommon for meetings to break into dance parties.

But sometimes it gets raw.

On this evening, the leaders were guiding the girls through a lesson plan about family. They asked what kinds of activities the girls did with their families in their home countries.

One girl described a paseo de olla, a hike in Colombia in which members each bring a different ingredient to contribute to a cookout of a big communal stew. Another talked about accompanying her family to church.

But one girl declined to answer, saying it hurt too much to think about her family, which has been divided, with some members left back home.

“I’ll cry,” she said.

A girl spreads glue on a stick photo frame.

A few beats later, she shared about how she had been separated from her parents for days while they hiked across the Darien Gap, a dense jungle on the Colombia-Panama border.

The craft activity this day involved Popsicle sticks, which the girls were gluing together to make picture frames.

Valentina looked at a photograph of her family — her parents, two siblings and her at a restaurant celebrating her father’s birthday a few years ago — and broke into sobs.

Her family had never dreamed of leaving their home in Ambato, a city in the highlands of Ecuador. But after gang members started killing people who refused to sell cocaine for them in and around the restaurant run by Valentina’s parents, the family sold most of its possessions and fled. They eventually arrived in New York, which they chose because they had heard that the city was offering migrants free housing.

No one had wanted to leave her brother and sister behind, but the family lacked the money for everybody to journey north. Her parents were still paying off the smugglers that had helped her and her parents get to the U.S.

Her father, José, waited every day outside a Home Depot in Flushing, Queens, looking for work. Her mother, Mirian, had recently left an under-the-table job at a Queens restaurant that paid just $500 for 84 hours of work each week.

Valentina was enrolled in school and was learning English. But she sometimes felt buried by pressure — her parents remind her frequently that they uprooted their lives and made this difficult journey largely for her sake.

Women and girls cross their arms and hold hands in a circle.

Santiago went to Valentina, who was wiping tears from her face, and pulled her in for a hug. “When one of us cries, we all cry,” she said.

“Sometimes when we’re new to a place,” Santiago said, “all we need is a friend.”

When the meeting ended, everybody stood together in what the Girl Scouts describe as a friendship circle. The leaders encouraged the girls to silently make a wish. Valentina closed her eyes tight.

Then one of the leaders squeezed the hand of the girl next to her. The next girl did the same. The squeeze traveled around until everyone threw their hands into the air and broke out laughing.

As Valentina was leaving, she told Santiago her sad news. Because of a New York policy that allows migrant families to stay in a shelter for only 60 days at a time, she and her parents would have to leave in a few days.

The shelter barred entry for people who were not staying there, so Valentina would be able to attend Girl Scout meetings only virtually. She would miss a planned visit to a sleepover camp upstate.

“Take me with you!” she called out to Santiago as the troop leader prepared to leave.

Santiago turned to her. “I wish I could.”