‘They Want To Steal My Daughter’: Flawed System Could Let Judges Grant Full Custody Of Migrant Children To American Families
The decisions can be made by state judges without notifying the biological parents, and the cases are hard to track at a federal level. Meanwhile, the number of young children forced to have a day in court is ever-increasing.
The Associated Press:
Deported Parents May Lose Kids To Adoption
As the deportees were led off the plane onto the steamy San Salvador tarmac, an anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: "They want to steal my daughter!" It had been 10 weeks since Ramos had last held her 2-year-old, Alexa. Ten weeks since she was arrested crossing the border into Texas and U.S. immigration authorities seized her daughter and told her she would never see the girl again. (Burke and Mendoza, 10/9)
The New York Times:
Migrant Children In Search Of Justice: A 2-Year-Old’s Day In Immigration Court
The youngest child to come before the bench in federal immigration courtroom No. 14 was so small she had to be lifted into the chair. Even the judge in her black robes breathed a soft “aww” as her latest case perched on the brown leather. Her feet stuck out from the seat in small gray sneakers, her legs too short to dangle. Her fists were stuffed under her knees. As soon as the caseworker who had sat her there turned to go, she let out a whimper that rose to a thin howl, her crumpled face a bursting dam. (Yee and Jordan, 10/8)
And a detainee at the troubled Adelanto detention facility reports on the conditions inside —
Los Angeles Times:
L.A. Immigrant Who Spent Six Months In Detention Describes Harsh Conditions At Adelanto Facility
From his cell at the Adelanto immigration detention facility on July 11, 2017, Romulo Avelica Gonzalez scrawled out a journal entry on lined notebook paper. “Another person hanged himself,” he wrote in Spanish. “Lost asylum.” It was one of five suicide attempts over the course of eight months at the facility that houses nearly 2,000 detainees. Four months earlier, a Nicaraguan man had been found hanging in his cell from his bed sheets. (Castillo, 10/8)
