VivirLatino

Shattered Familiess, A report released yesterday by the Applied Research Center, states that current immigration enforcement policies put at risk 15,000 additional children for placement into the foster care system. The report is the first of its kind to research the impact of the intersection of immigration enforcement and the child welfare system.

As many families know, the foster care system already has parents of color, poor parents and immigrant parents in it’s crosshairs. Child welfare, working with local law enforcement who engage in racial profiling, put the long term care of children at risk. Poverty, instead of being looked at as a structural problem, is viewed as criminal neglect. Instead of attempting to attack the root causes of poverty, parents are criminalized and asked “why did you have children if you can’t afford them”. According to the report, children of immigrants are significantly more likely than children of non-immigrant parents to live in low-income families (below 200% poverty line)—35% to 49%. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that immigrant families ay not

I am reminded of the case of Cirila Baltazar Cruz, who lost custody of her daughter when a Mississippi social worker, who didn’t speak the same Indigenous language as Baltazar Cruz and who never sought translation services, found the Oaxacan mother unfit to care for her infant Ruby citing her lack of language skills, as well as fabrications that accused Baltazar Cruz of engaging in criminal activity. Eventually, Cruz was reunited with her daughter, but not before almost losing her permanently, as Ruby was placed in the care of a prominent local family that sought to fast track the child for adoption.

The ARC report presents many like cases, showing that what happened to Baltazar Cruz wasn’t a one off incident, but rather a symptom of how the criminalization of immigrants also seeks to make immigrant parenthood illegal. ARC identified at least 22 states across the country where children in foster care are separated from their parents because of immigration enforcement. Because of the long amount of time it often takes for immigration matters to be resolved, children lose
the opportunity to ever see their parents again when a juvenile dependency
court terminates parental rights. In fiscal year 2011, the United States deported a record-breaking 397,000 people and detained nearly that many. According to never before released federal data acquired by ARC through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a growing number of deportees are parents. In the first six months of 2011, the federal government removed more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S.-citizen children. ARC conservatively estimates that there are at least 5,100
children currently living in foster care whose parents have
been either detained or deported.

The increase in enforcement programs, like Secure Communities and 287(g, have made the situation worse. In counties where local police have signed 287(g) agreements with
ICE, children in foster care were, on average, about 29 percent more likely to have a detained or deported parent than in other counties.

Read more…