[The following is the latest from the Applied Research Center (ARC) on the intersections of immigration enforcement and the child welfare system in the United States.]

Shattered Families: The Perilous Intersection of Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System

Executive Summary

“Shattered Familie,” A Report by The Applied Research Center (ARC), is the first national investigation on threats to families when immigration enforcement and the child welfare system intersect. It explores the extent to which children in foster care are prevented from uniting with their detained or deported parents and the failures of the child welfare system to adequately work to reunify these families. ARC’s yearlong research project found that Clara and Josefina’s children are among thousands of children currently in foster care who are separated from their family because of immigration enforcement.

immigration policies and laws are based on the assumption that families will, and should, be united, whether or not parents are deported.2 Similarly, child welfare policy aims to reunify families whenever possible. In practice, however, when mothers and fathers are detained and deported and their children are relegated to foster care, fam- ily separation can last for extended periods. Too often, these 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 federal data released to ARC through a Freedom of Information Act request, a growing number and proportion 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. These deportations shatter families and endanger the children left behind.

Systematic research on this topic is challenging, because child welfare de- partments and the federal government fail to document cases of families separated in this way. This “Shattered Families” report is the first to provide evidence on the national scope and scale of the problem. As more noncitizens are detained, the number of children in foster care with parents removed by ICE is expected to grow. Without explicit policies and guidelines to protect families, children will continue to lose their families at alarming rates.

Key Findings

• ARC conservatively estimates that there are at least 5,100 children currently living in foster care whose parents have been either detained or deported (this projection is based on data collected from six key states and an analysis of trends in 14 additional states with similarly high numbers of foster care and foreign-born populations). This is approximately 1.25 percent of the total children in foster care. If the same rate holds true for new cases, in the next five years, at least 15,000 more children will face these threats to reunification with their detained and deported mothers and fathers. These children face formidable barriers to reunification with their families.
• In areas where local police aggressively participate in immigration enforcement, children of noncitizens are more likely to be separated from their parents and face barriers to reunification. For example, in counties where local police have signed 287(g) agreements with iCe, children in foster care were, on average, about 29 per- cent more likely to have a detained or deported parent than in other counties. The impact of aggressive immigration enforcement re- mains statistically significant when our research controls for the size of a county’s foreign-born population and a county’s proximity to the border.
• immigrant victims of domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence are at particular risk of losing their children. Approximately one in nine of the stories recounted to ARC in interviews and focus groups involved domestic violence. As a result of ICE’s increased use of local police and jails to enforce immigration laws, when victims of violence are arrested, ICE too often detains them and their children enter foster care. Many im- migrant victims face an impossible choice: remain with an abuser or risk detention and the loss of their children.
• ARC has identified at least 22 states where these cases have emerged in the last two years. This is a growing national problem, not one confined to border jurisdictions or states. Across the 400 counties included in our projections, more than one in four (28.8 percent) of the foster care children with detained or deported parents are from non-border states.

Whether children enter foster care as a direct result of their parents’ detention or deportation, or they were already in the child welfare system, immigration enforcement systems erect often-insurmountable barriers to family unity.

Key Barriers to Family Unitiy

• Federal immigration enforcement uses local police and jails to detain noncitizens. As a result of aggressive local immigration en- forcement, especially the expansion of Secure Communities, any inter- action with police can spur ICE involvement and lead to detention and deportation. An incident with police that would not separate children from a citizen parent can result in a long-term or permanent separation if the parent is not a U.S. citizen.
• ICE does not protect families at the time of apprehension. ICE and arresting police officers too often refuse to allow parents to make arrangements for their children. Existing ICE guidelines are largely out- dated and insufficient for the current immigration enforcement context in which ICE has shifted from high-profile raids to more-hidden and devolved forms of enforcement that operate through local police and jails and smaller-scale ICE enforcement actions.
• ICE detention obstructs participation in CPS plans for family unity. ICE consistently detains parents when they could be released on their own recognizance or expand the use of community-based supervi- sory programs. Once detained, ICE denies parents access to programs required to complete CPS case plans. Due to the isolation of detention centers and ICE’s refusal to transport detainees to hearings, parents can neither communicate with/visit their children nor participate in juvenile court proceedings. Child welfare caseworkers and attorneys struggle to locate and maintain contact with detained parents.
• Child welfare departments lack proactive policies to reunify children with deported parents. ARC’s research found that chil- dren are reunited with their deported parents only if foreign consulates are involved with the case. However, few child welfare departments systematically contact a foreign consulate when they take custody of the U.S. citizen children of a detained or deported noncitizen.
• Systemic bias against reunifying children with parents in other countries is pervasive in child welfare practice. CPS administra- tors, caseworkers, judges, and attorneys (including the children’s own lawyers) often believe that children are better off in the United States, even if those children are in foster care. This belief often supersedes the child welfare system’s mandate to move toward family reunification and places borders on family and parental rights.
• Structural barriers and systemic bias against undocumented parents and relatives threaten the reunification of families. Despite clear child welfare policy that prioritizes placing children with their own families, many child welfare departments will not place children with their undocumented non-custodial parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents or other relatives. As a result, children of detained and deported parents are likely to remain in foster care with strangers when they could be with their own family.

Policy Recommendations

As the federal government continues to expand its immigration enforcement infrastructure, detention and deportation will continue to pose barriers to family unity for families involved in the child welfare system. Federal, state and local governments must create explicit policies to protect families from separation.

These polices should stop the clock on the child welfare process and the immigration enforcement process to ensure that families can stay together and allow parents to make the best decisions for the care and custody of their children.

Congress

• Institute protections for detained parents including: alternatives to detention for parents; provisions to enable detained parents to comply with child welfare case plans and participate meaningfully in dependency proceedings; and policies to facilitate family unity at the time of depor- tation if a parent wishes to leave the country with their child. (i.e., the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections for Separated Children Act).
• Reinstate judicial discretion to consider the best interests of children and families in decisions about deportation (i.e., the Child Citizen Protection Act).

Executive Branch, Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

• Suspend the Secure Communities program and other programs including 287(g) and the Criminal Alien Program that use local criminal justice systems as arms of the immigration enforcement apparatus.
• Amend the June 2011 ICE discretion memo to clarify that all parents of minor children in the U.S. should be granted discretionary relief with an emphasis on parents with children in foster care.
• Release parents on their own recognizance and expand the use of community-based supervisory programs.
• The DHS Office of Inspector General should initiate a study on the prevalence of practices that result in children entering or remaining in foster care as a result of detention and deportation.

State legislatures

• Create exceptions to the termination of parental rights timelines for incarcerated, detained and deported parents.
• Institute “time-of-arrest” protocols for local law enforcement agencies to enable parents to decide who should take custody of their children.

State Child Welfare Departments and Juvenile Dependency Courts

• State child welfare departments should initiate research to explore the extent to which children in foster care have detained or deported parents.
• All caseworkers, supervisors, attorneys and judges who practice in de- pendency court should be mandated to participate in training on immigration law and immigration enforcement policies.
• All state and/or county child welfare departments should sign agreements with foreign consulates to ensure that as soon as noncitizen parents of foster children are detained, consular involvement is commenced.
• Adopt clear policies ensuring equal treatment of undocumented parents and families in the child welfare system, including clear guidelines on the rights of undocumented parents and extended families to be treated equitably as viable caregivers for children.
• Create state- or county-level staff positions dedicated to facilitating reunification for families impacted by immigration enforcement.

[Click here to download the full ARC report.]

[Click here to read the press release announcing the ARC report.]

[Click here to read a related article by the principle author of the report.]