Deportation and US Citizen Children
.....what's the least worst alternative? And other child welfare news.
As the Trump Administration makes efforts to increase deportations of adults without legal status, there’s renewed conversation regarding how to manage situations where an undocumented parent is slated for deportation and has a citizen child born here in the US. According to this recent study, 1.8 million US-born children have two undocumented parents, and a 2019 report found that over 4 million citizen children were living with at least one parent with no legal status. There’s no doubt that having a parent — or both parents — deported is terribly traumatic for a child. At the same time, having a US citizen child does not shield parents from deportation. What’s the right policy approach in these situations?
One approach taken by a significant number of advocates for immigrant families has been to help undocumented parents prepare for the potential that they may be arrested and deported on short notice, leaving no one with legal authority over a young child. “Family Preparedness Guides” that advise undocumented parents on choosing a substitute caregiver for their child and empowering the caregiver to handle school enrollment, medical care, and other duties are nothing new, but there’s a renewed focus in light of the Administration’s actions.
There’s also the possibility that parents can take their children with them to the family’s country of origin. Shortly after the election, President Trump made this suggestion on NBC News, to the dismay of some advocates. “[A] loving and responsible parent might make the painful choice to leave their American child behind rather than subject them to the risk of violence and abject poverty in a country far from the place the child was born and raised,” two academics recently wrote in the Dallas Morning News.
From a child welfare point of view, and as a parent who moved to Latin America with three young children for a time, it’s hard to imagine deported parents voluntarily leaving their children behind in the US. Far more traumatic to a child than moving to an unknown country is indefinite, perhaps permanent, separation from a parent to whom the child is attached. And children left without parental protection are often easy targets for abuse, neglect, and exploitation. While the deported parent may leave the citizen child in the States with trusted family members, I’ve seen too many situations in which those family members ended up cutting off contact between the deported parent and the citizen child or themselves fell into a situation requiring child protective services to remove the child to foster care.
The less traumatic approach, and the one best for the child and family, is likely going to be placing that child with the parents (or grandparents) in the country of origin. But before doing so, the government does have obligations to ensure that child’s safety and future opportunities. No child — citizen or otherwise — should be sent to a foreign nation without a study ensuring the child will have a stable, protective parent or other caregiver and at least the economic basics. And no citizen child should be placed in a foreign country without first being supplied with a US passport and the assurance that the family’s country of origin will recognize the child as a full citizen. So long as we ensure the child has a US passport so he or she can return one day, placement with family in the country of origin is temporary, not a permanent expulsion from Paradise.
The National Conference of State Legislatures is out with a nationwide summary of state legislative action on juvenile and youth justice in 2024.
Kudos to the Florida Legislature, which is working to create a specialized foster care program for high-acuity youth. That’s the sort of service they seem to need in Kentucky, where a behaviorally challenged teen in foster care caused $27,000 in damage to an office in which he was being housed.
In happier news, Kentucky is integrating health records into its child welfare records.
Missouri is also working to overhaul its foster care system, especially its capacity to provide care for high-acuity youth.
New Mexico legislative happenings in child welfare.
From the New York Post: why kids in foster care need attorneys.
The European Union has a new FREE online video course on protecting children from sexual abuse.
Read about the ongoing political battles over Pennsylvania’s State Child Advocate in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
South Carolina is looking to improve and expand kinship care.
From Illinois, continuing coverage of the foster care liability insurance crisis.
In Texas, a new judge has been appointed to take over the state’s long-running federal foster care class action litigation. Judge Randy Crane has served on the federal bench since being appointed in 2002 by President George W. Bush. He replaces Judge Janis Jack, who presided over the case for the past decade and who the Fifth Circuit determined had lost the ability to judge the case fairly. Texas’ family protection agency recently reported a 50% reduction in removals to foster care over the past two years and reduction in the number of child abuse deaths.
A federal judge in West Virginia has dismissed a lawsuit seeking reform of that state’s foster care system, essentially finding the court cannot provide the relief plaintiffs requested. The opinion is interesting, although I have to wonder if it will stand on appeal given the Fourth Circuit’s earlier opinion involving the same case.
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