Fighting for Justice for Immigrant Families in the Child Welfare System
It has been over one year since Guadalupe last saw her 3-year-old grandson, Samuel. She helped raise him for the first year of his life. And when his parents brought him to the United States seeking safety and stability, she kept tabs on his growth and development through regular video calls and photo updates. She could still be his doting grandmother despite being separated by a border.
All that changed a year ago when Samuel was removed from his family and placed in a foster home. The couple that received him hoped to adopt him. They promptly cut off all communication with Samuel’s biological family, including Guadalupe. No updates, no photos, no video calls. No news of first words or favorites toys or the next developmental milestone.
What follows is a heart-breaking story at the intersection of two broken systems — the U.S. immigration system and a state child welfare system. The details are too nuanced to unpack fully here, but throughout the nine months the Young Center’s Technical Assistance Program (TAP) has been working in support of Guadalupe, one theme has been persistent and pervasive — immigrant families face inequitable access to family reunification from state child welfare systems. These are the inequities that we attempt to address through TAP’s work so that families like Guadalupe’s and children like Samuel have a chance at justice.
Guadalupe is now here in the United States as an asylum seeker. She is also fighting an extraordinarily uphill battle to adopt Samuel. The stakes could not be higher for her and the rest of her family members who continue to love and long for Samuel. Samuel’s foster parents have already proclaimed that if they are able to adopt him, they will not maintain any contact between Samuel and his biological family. In other words, if Guadalupe does not prevail, Samuel will grow up separated from family members that have cared for him and continue to want to care for him. He will grow up estranged from his birthright culture and community.
At the Young Center, we are committed to building a just world where no child is ever subjected to the harms of detention, deportation, and/or family separation. When these harms are inflicted by systems such as the child welfare system, we fight for justice, and we stand in defense of children’s rights to grow up connected to their families, communities, and culture because far too often, the odds are stacked against loving family members like Guadalupe.
In our time working with Guadalupe, we have witnessed how her immigration status has triggered endless obstacles in her efforts to participate in child welfare proceedings and adopt Samuel. Language access has been one such obstacle. Guadalupe is a Spanish speaker. Yet the documents she is sent, the forms she is expected to fill out — they are all in English. She has attended multiple court hearings where no interpretation service was provided to her, despite the fact that Samuel’s child welfare case is unfolding in a city where most residents speak Spanish. Nevertheless, Guadalupe’s advocates routinely have to translate materials for her and push for her access to Spanish-language interpretation in hearings.
But perhaps the biggest challenge Guadalupe faces is that her status as an asylum seeker has already prompted decision makers in the child welfare system to view her as an “unstable” caregiver. Some have openly posited that she could be deported at a moment’s notice, implying that no one in those circumstances could be trusted to care for a child. That assumption ignores two undeniable facts. First, asylum seekers are here with the U.S. government’s knowledge and permission. Barring the commission of a serious crime, asylum seekers are protected from deportation during the duration of their asylum case, which commonly takes upwards of five years in today’s backlogged immigration court system. Second, millions of undocumented parents live, thrive, and provide loving homes for their children in this country. They are not “unfit” simply because they lack permanent immigration status.
It has been over one year since Guadalupe last saw her 3-year-old grandson, Samuel. For months, the child welfare stakeholders responsible for his well-being did nothing to sustain his connection to his grandmother. Now, they actively oppose it. Guadalupe’s repeated requests to have even just a simple video call with Samuel have been denied despite the fact that she has moved mountains to try to stay connected to him. At this point, the government actors involved are poised to pursue a course of action where Samuel grows up wholly disconnected from Guadalupe and other members of his family who love him dearly.
It is no secret that child welfare systems across the country can act as vehicles for family policing that disproportionately impact black and brown families. These families routinely face undue burdens in their efforts to remain intact. And immigrant families face an additional layer of complexity that further impedes children’s ability to be raised by the family (biological or psychological) and connected to their culture, community, and heritage. The systemic injustice they experience is exacerbated by their status as immigrants. The inequities multiplied by virtue of their engagement with two broken systems.
In the nearly two years since the Young Center began developing its Technical Assistance Program, our data shows Guadalupe’s experience is not as rare as we might hope. The assumptions and biases she faces echo those playing out in other cases and in other states’ child welfare systems.
The goal of the Technical Assistance Program has always been to identify when these injustices occur and to equip child welfare stakeholders — attorneys, case managers, judges — with the information and tools necessary to ensure immigrant families have the same opportunity to remain intact as other families do. We seek their equitable access to family unity and ultimately, to freedom from system involvement.
By Kelly Albinak Kribs and Shaina Simenas, Co-Directors of the Technical Assistance Program
