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One morning in August 2010, federal agents stormed the home of Clara and Josefina,
two sisters raising their three small children together.
The agents handcuffed Clara in front of the kids, then loaded them into separate vehicles.
When Josefina got home from work later that morning,
she was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, at her door.
While in custody, the two moms found out that they’d been the victims of a botched drug bust.
The federal agents found no drugs, and CPS found no evidence of maltreatment.
But, because the sisters are undocumented immigrants, ICE kept them in detention for four months.
For those four months, the mothers had no contact with their children, two of whom are
US citizens.
Then, without notice, ICE dropped the two mothers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
They had little idea where their children were, except that they had been put into foster care,
with strangers.
Under the Obama administration, a record-breaking 400,000 people were deported last year.
These families have seen first-hand how immigration enforcement can tear children from their parents.
Because they’re locked up, the foster care process moves forward without them.
It effectively puts borders on parenthood itself.
The Applied Research Center’s groundbreaking new report, “Shattered Families,”
is the first national study to explore how children whose parents are detained and deported
are placed in foster care.
Over the last year, ARC surveyed foster care agencies and child welfare lawyers in communities
across the U.S.,
and interviewed hundreds of caseworkers, policymakers, judges, attorneys, and foreign consulates,
as well as mothers and fathers who are held in detention centers or who’ve been deported.
ARC estimates that well over 5,000 children currently in foster care
are threatened with extended or permanent separation when their parents are detained
or deported.
If immigration and child welfare policy doesn’t change, another 15,000 may follow in the next
five years.
As one child welfare attorney told us, “once parents are deported, they’re treated like
they fall off the face of the earth.”
This is a growing problem because the federal government now requires
most local law enforcement to check immigration status.
A routine traffic stop can lead to unimaginable consequences.
Mothers that ARC spoke to in detention told us about calling the police on an abusive partner,
only to find themselves having their own status checked.
Once detained, most parents were completely excluded from decisions about the well-being
of their children.
One parental rights advocate told us about a mother that couldn’t be found for seven months,
because ICE had transferred her from New York to Pennsylvania to Arizona without informing
anyone.
ARC also found that many CPS systems and Child Protective Courts are biased against reuniting children
with their own parents in another country, or with an undocumented family member in the U.S.
So the children stay in foster care.
This goes against clear research that children are better off with their own families
and it also violates CPS’ federal mandate to reunite families.
And Clara and Josefina?
After more than a year without seeing their three kids, their family was reunited in Mexico.
But everything isn’t back to normal.
Josefina's son was only 9 months when ICE kicked down the door.
He’s now almost two years old; he’s spent more of his life in foster care than with
his own mother.
In some ways, they are among the lucky ones.
Over 5,000 children with detained or deported parents are currently in the foster care system.
Many will never see their birth-mother or father again.
And unless something is done, thousands more will follow.