Cover
story Immigrants frustrated by laws that take kids from home
By DAISY
HERNÁNDEZ Special to the National Catholic
Reporter New York
Maria arrived at the Bronx foster care agency carrying fruit juice
and potato chips for the weekly two-hour visit with her children. She waited
anxiously by the elevator. Usually, she brought tortillas and other Mexican
foods for the children, but this day in spring 2001, shed been
rushed.
Maria, who asked that her name be changed in this story to protect
her in court, had spent the morning talking with her social worker. Maria is
one of a growing number of Mexican parents in New York City losing their
children to the foster care system. In her case, she is caught up in a spiral
intended to prevent women and children from violence.
The elevator door opened, and Marias 7-year-old son rushed
into her arms. She kissed his face and thick, dark hair and hugged her
6-year-old daughter.
The childrens foster father handed Maria her youngest
daughter. With a brown plump face and an open smile, the baby is a tiny version
of her mother. Now 18 months old, she was taken into foster care just three
months after her birth.
They were taken into foster care in 1999 when her husband was
accused of sexual abuse by a relative. Maria herself was considered an
accomplice for not having prevented the alleged crime. Although the charges
against her husband were dropped, her children have not been returned.
Holding the baby, Maria began asking, Dont you
remember Mommy? A kiss for Mommy? The baby smiled and looked around for
her siblings, while Maria buried her tear-stained face in the babys blue
jacket.
This was not the family life Maria had envisioned when she left
Guerrero, Mexico, eight years ago.
Marias situation is repeated many times in New York
Citys Mexican community, where a largely undocumented population has
grown dramatically in the past 20 years.
According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Mexicans
are the largest undocumented group in the United States. In New York City, the
number of Mexicans grew from 62,000 in 1980 to an estimated 200,000 in 2000,
according to the Department of City Planning.
In East Harlem, the growth has led residents to rename 113th
Street Little Mexico. It is this same East Harlem that in 1999 had
the highest rate in Manhattan of children taken into foster care, according to
a report released last summer by the citys Administration for
Childrens Services.
Because of their status as undocumented workers, parents like
Maria have a harder time meeting the administrations mandates -- its
requirements before children can be returned to their homes.
The immigrant status is the real barrier for these families.
It sets them up to not get their kids back, said Ilze Earner, one of the
founders of The Immigrant and Child Welfare Project in East Harlem. On
the top of that, you get the stereotypes that these families cant take
care of their kids.
New York City is not the only place with a boom in the Mexican
population. Throughout the Midwest and Southeast, a jump in the Mexican
community has led to situations similar to that in East Harlem. In Nebraska,
where the meatpacking industry has attracted Mexican migrants, the idea of
a stable home has, in some cases, resulted in mandating that
Mexican parents who are residents become citizens before having their child
returned.
Why would you require someone to be a citizen to get their
kid back? Its not legally justified, said Milo Mumgard, executive
director of the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest.
Maria said she has not thought about her documentation status,
only her three children.
I havent been able to sleep. I havent
rested, Maria said. Holding a wet tissue, she recounts the evening police
officers and social workers took her children. The children started
crying, Maria said.
They kept saying, Mommy, dont let us go!
Were scared of the police! I promised them that wherever
theyd be, Id get them back.
Representatives of the Administration for Childrens Services
emphasize that the department does not want to separate families. It is simply
responding to calls usually received from schools, police officers, social
workers and hospitals.
Family and child welfare advocates, however, have a different
version. In New York City, a number of highly publicized cases in which
children died in their homes changed how the administration handled reports of
child abuse and neglect.
Theyre responding to pressure from the press,
said Daisy Vasquez of New York Citys Puerto Rican Family Institute.
Before they used to warn. Now they dont think twice. They take the
child and then investigate. They are investigating for a year, and the children
are out of the family for a year and a half.
For Maria, 24, getting her children back has been difficult.
Parents who are undocumented workers and often employed for low wages are
required by the city to meet the same criteria for housing and child-care as
parents entitled to government assistance. Maria learned that if she wanted her
children back, then she had to leave her husband and find employment and
suitable housing on her own. She had never worked outside the home.
Its setting people up for complete failure, said
Earner, who has also witnessed children not being placed with relatives who are
themselves undocumented.
Caseworkers argue that undocumented relatives do not provide a
stable home. Undocumented immigrant parents are also often suspected of wanting
to take the children out of the country, even though they usually do not have
the resources to do so.
The first days after the separation were the hardest, Maria said.
She was not given a phone number for the foster care family and had no way of
contacting her children. I spent time crying, wondering if they had gone
to school, if they had already eaten, Maria said.
Maria did meet the administrations mandates. She left her
husband, got work at a butcher store and rented an apartment in East Harlem
with a city housing subsidy not based on immigration status.
Ive done everything they told me and still I
dont have my kids back, Maria said.
In family court, Marias only legal representation has been
the court-appointed lawyer. Last December, the citys Special Child
Welfare Advisory Panel released a final report stating that lack of adequate
legal representation was the most critical issue for parents in family
court.
Its an economic question, said Esperanza Chacon,
the emergency services coordinator at the Tepeyac Association, an organization
for Mexicans that is funded in part by the New York archdiocese.
Its really easy for people to fall into this.
Maria is increasingly afraid. Once children have been in foster
care for 15 months, the city can begin terminating a parents rights and
offering the children for adoption. On June 22, she was due back in court. The
move to adoption is part of federal legislation former President Clinton
passed. It is meant to prevent children from lingering in foster care. The
Administration for Childrens Services reports that the number of
adoptions has almost doubled in the last four years.
Maria, who continues praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe and
attending Mass, is becoming more desperate. Im losing my mind. In
this country, if youre not crazy, they make you crazy, she
said.
At the end of a weekly family visit in the Bronx, Maria carried
her youngest daughter outside where the foster care father hails a cab. The
baby is scheduled to see a speech therapist soon. She rarely speaks, opting
instead to point with her fingers. On the street, she pointed to a low tree
branch in someones yard. Maria whispered to her in Spanish and they
lingered by the tree.
The cab pulled up, and there was a flurry of kisses and hugs.
Maria squeezed the baby one last time.
National Catholic Reporter, June 29,
2001
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