BY AMY DRISCOLL

                      A 16-year-old Guatemalan boy who speaks a rare Mayan language and suffers from post-traumatic stress
                      disorder remained in legal limbo Thursday in a case that highlights the continuing debate over the treatment of
                      unaccompanied minors by immigration officials.

                      Like hundreds of other children who enter the United States alone and illegally every year, Alfredo Lopez-Sanchez
                      initially was sent to Boystown, an emergency shelter for immigrant children in southwest Miami-Dade County,
                      after he crossed the border into Texas in July.

                      But Boystown officials say they learned that Lopez was planning an escape from the unsecured shelter, so they
                      shipped him to the Monroe County Jail -- and that's where the debate begins.

                      Lawyers from the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, representing Lopez, say that over the next three months
                      the boy was bounced from jail cell to hotel room to a youth shelter in Pennsylvania -- a total of seven transfers.

                      They say officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service shunted the boy from place to place without
                      regard for his deteriorating mental condition and his need for an interpreter to comprehend his situation.

                      ''I was very sad, and I was crying, and I was thinking that Boystown was better than the small space I was in,''
                      the boy said in federal court in Miami on Thursday, describing through an interpreter the days he spent in the
                      Monroe County Jail.

                      The final stop: Berks County Youth Center in Leesport, Pa., more than 1,200 miles from the attorney who has
                      been representing him and the interpreter who has translated English to Mam, the Mayan language Lopez speaks.

                      An INS official said Lopez was moved to the Pennsylvania shelter because it is surrounded by woods and the boy
                      would have to walk for miles to escape, while Boystown is in a more suburban area, close to major roads.

                      Lopez, who looks younger than his age, has told his lawyers he has a mentally ill mother and an abusive father
                      who killed his little sister in front of him. He lived in a rural town in Guatemala, he said, with no TV. He attended
                      school ''off and on'' for three years and understands a few words of Spanish.

                      In court Thursday, he described how he learned about one of his transfers: ``I went to a court hearing, and I was
                      told I was going somewhere else.''

                      Lopez wasn't returned to South Florida until immigration lawyer JoNel Newman filed a complaint asking for a
                      federal injunction against the INS to force the agency to place the boy within easy reach of his lawyer and
                      interpreter.

                      Allen Hausman, a lawyer for the Justice Department's office of immigration litigation, said the government has a
                      responsibility to protect Lopez. If he escaped and was harmed, it would be the responsibility of the government,
                      he said.

                      ''For a person of this age and appearance and size, there are people in our community who might offer a hand of
                      friendship and then exploit this youth,'' Hausman said.

                      U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno, seeking to find middle ground, suggested that Lopez's lawyers file a petition
                      asking the INS to move the boy back to South Florida until his asylum claim can be heard.

                      The judge also asked to hear from the acting INS district director for Florida, John Bulger, when the hearing
                      resumes Feb. 15. He issued a temporary injunction against the INS that allows the boy to stay in South Florida
                      until the hearing.

                      ''He's not going anywhere,'' Moreno said. ``There's no point in flying him back and forth.''