Don’t remove immigrant kids from their families

August 6, 2024

CFR and Children’s Health Fund wrote a joint op-ed about the alarming trend in Family Court neglect filings against non-citizen parents and subsequent removal of their children into the foster system. Here is a quote from the article:

“The Family Court Act directs that before a Family Court judge in NYC can order that a family be separated, the judge must determine whether removal is necessary to avoid imminent risk to the child and consider whether continuation in the child’s home would be contrary to the best interests of the child. Judges also have to weigh whether the child protective agency could have taken any measures to avoid removal. We urge all ACS workers and Family Court judges to recognize that the immigrant families they encounter have fled unsafe conditions in their countries of origin only to face inhospitable bureaucracies and punitive shelter rules. And finally, we call upon ACS and Family Court judges to consider the incontrovertible science that family separation harms immigrant children.”

Read the full article here.