Stolen Babies

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Anybody here who knows my views on illegals knows I have little sympathy for them. Still, the government stealing their children and putting them up for adoption as if their parents didn't exist is an injustice that I wouldn't wish on anyone. It's offensive and beneath this country to steal children from loving parents who want to keep them just because they were in the US illegally.

ABC News and the AP news service have done several stories on this. Please find excerpts and links from two of them below.

I'm absolutely disgusted! What do you think of this practice?

NC Deportation Case Highlights Child Welfare Maze

By GOSIA WOZNIACKA and MICHAEL BIESECKER Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. March 9, 2012 (AP)

When immigration agents deported Felipe Montes to Mexico two years ago, his three young sons were left in the care of their mentally ill, American-born mother in a small North Carolina mountain town.

Despite immigration policies that allow for the release of primary caregivers, federal authorities worked swiftly to expel Montes. Within two weeks, social workers placed the boys in foster care.

Child welfare officials are now asking a judge to strip Montes of his parental rights, reasoning it's better for the children to live with strangers in the country where they were born than with their father in Mexico. Such a ruling could clear the way for their adoption.

That would be unfathomable to Montes, whose only brushes with the law were a string of traffic violations.

"I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't use drugs," said Montes, 32, who crossed the border illegally in 2003 to work on Christmas tree farms. "I have always taken care of my children, I have always loved them. And now, the social services people want to take away my rights and give my children away to strangers."

Montes' lawyer says the father is at risk of being deemed an unfit parent solely because of his immigration status.

Like thousands of deported parents whose children were taken in by the foster care system, Montes is barred from returning to visit his kids or attend court hearings on their future. He wants his boys to live with him in El Encino, a small village in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, but county officials have declined to allow it.

"I can't see them. I can't give them a hug. It's very depressing," Montes said by phone from Mexico.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say their intent is not to break up families, but there's no system to allow detained parents to make decisions about their children or reunite with them. Legal experts say parents often lose custody solely due to immigration problems — and not abuse or neglect.

A 2011 report from the Applied Research Center, a New York-based racial justice think tank, found about 5,100 children in 22 states were in foster care after their parents were either detained or deported. The government doesn't compile national numbers on such separations.

The report — based on surveys with child welfare caseworkers, attorneys, judges and immigrants — concludes that immigration officers often refuse to allow parents to make arrangements for their children. Once in ICE custody, parents are often denied access to family court hearings, phones and attorneys. Many don't even know what happened to their children.

"Once parents are deported, they're considered fallen off the face of the earth," said Seth Wessler, the report's principal investigator. "Family reunification tends to go out the door."

Such separations are enough of a problem that immigration advocates urge parents to prepare kits with children's passports and medical records or to sign documents allowing others to care for the children.

Three years after Montes came to the U.S., he married a North Carolina native and the couple rented a trailer near Sparta, a town of about 2,000. The marriage made him eligible for legal immigration status, but he didn't undertake the lengthy, expensive process.

Stolen Babies? Immigrant Mother Loses Four Kids

By LAUREN GILGER, CHARLES GORRA, and BRIAN ROSS (@brianross)

Feb. 2, 2012

The scars of childbirth were still healing on Amelia Reyes Jimenez's stomach in 2008 when police came to her Phoenix apartment and took her three-month-old daughter from her arms.

Three and a half years later, Reyes Jimenez and her four children have become statistics in the U.S. crackdown on illegal immigration. Each year thousands of children of undocumented immigrants, like Amelia's kids, wind up in foster care when their parents are arrested for immigration violations. Some are even adopted by U.S. citizens while their parents are held in federal detention centers or deported back to their native countries.

Reyes Jimenez's son and three daughters are now living in foster care in Phoenix, and are awaiting possible adoption. Reyes Jimenez is back in Mexico, her parental rights terminated by an Arizona judge, and she cries when she remembers the raid that began it all.

"My daughters were calling, 'Mommy, my Mommy,'" said Reyes Jimenez. "I felt destroyed. I felt like I would never see my girls, even worse [the baby] was so small. I had just bought her cradle and her stroller."

Edited March 10, 2012 by Sofiyya

[luckytxn 2,264]

Shame that Illegals bring this on by having kids here. Still they are the parents and they should be allowed to be wit the parent. The kids should leave also.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Screw them, the parents made their choices. The kids are better off here anyway.

Lets face it THEY ARE unfit parents.

Edited March 10, 2012 by Sousuke

[Darnell 8,478]

This 'having children in the USA' thing, for an illegal alien -

I'm sorry, but the decision was already made to evade the law.

Anything, and I DO MEAN ANYTHING, that happens afterwards?

Is just another link in the 'geez yer stupid' chain of events.

I have no sympathy for the children - they are solely ruled by their parents' choices.

[Darnell 8,478]

Three years after Montes came to the U.S., he married a North Carolina native and the couple rented a trailer near Sparta, a town of about 2,000. The marriage made him eligible for legal immigration status, but he didn't undertake the lengthy, expensive process.

B||sjit.

Fact Checkers on Strike?

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I am disgusted also, expecially when the government can fix this tomorrow. Pas laws making it economical suicide to hire illegals. With no jobs available they will not come, the ones here will self deport and they will no longer be subjected to this type of exploitation, abuse. Their children will be spared. As born-here Americans their children can return when they are adults.

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

More hysterical headlines; oh, well.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Shame that Illegals bring this on by having kids here. Still they are the parents and they should be allowed to be wit the parent. The kids should leave also.

That would be the humane thing to do, but, apparently, the desire of White Americans to adopt is more important than the humanity of non-white parents.

This was the justification behind the theft of Native American children for adoption by Whites prior to the law stopping that practice in the 1980s, and how Muslim immigrant families lost their children to Christians in the 1960's and 70s.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

That would be the humane thing to do, but, apparently, the desire of White Americans to adopt is more important than the humanity of non-white parents.

This was the justification behind the theft of Native American children for adoption by Whites prior to the law stopping that practice in the 1980s, and how Muslim immigrant families lost their children to Christians in the 1960's and 70s.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Don't think the article brought up anything to do with Whites.....

Anyway I completely disagree in this regard. If you cross illegally into another nation knowingly, you are not fit to be a parent. If you bring your children with you from Mexico thats also cut and dry child endangerment.

Edited March 11, 2012 by Sousuke

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Also, once the parents return to their country, under the Hague Convention which the US signed, they have the ability to get their children back.

Of course, a court might rules this as a technical abandonment.

Edited March 11, 2012 by Sousuke

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Don't think the article brought up anything to do with Whites.....

Whites are the ones benefiting from the adoptions.

Anyway I completely disagree in this regard. If you cross illegally into another nation knowingly, you are not fit to be a parent. If you bring your children with you from Mexico thats also cut and dry child endangerment.

One does not have anything to do with the other and certainly doesn't fall in line with the normal practice of how bad parenting is judged.

Also, once the parents return to their country, under the Hague Convention which the US signed, they have the ability to get their children back.

Of course, a court might rules this as a technical abandonment.

The inability of the deported parent(s) to attend custody hearings is considered to be abandonment, allowing for termination of parental rights.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Whites are the ones benefiting from the adoptions.

One does not have anything to do with the other and certainly doesn't fall in line with the normal practice of how bad parenting is judged.

Regarding the first, thats an assumption & towards the latter I respectfully disagree.

Edited March 11, 2012 by Sousuke

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Regarding the first, thats an assumption & towards the latter I respectfully disagree.

The common approach to families in the social services system is family reunification. In the case of illegal parents, it's reversed so that White families have a Third World supply of adoptable children without the expense of travel.

[luckytxn 2,264]

I am a white American and it is not benefiting me at all. It may benefit the few that are seeking adopting a baby or kid. I personally think it is a wrong practice. If the kids have a parent then the kids should leave with the parent if that parent wants their kids.He should not be deported until the rights of his kids are addressed or have a lawyer that can be the kids advocates like they do in divorce cases.

I think it should be presumed that the kids will be deported also if there is only one parent and being deported. If there is two parents and one is legal then the kids stay here with that parent. We can't allow the illegal parent to stay because they got lucky to have kids here though. That would make it where the first things an illegal does when get here is to knock up or get pregnant. That would mean they can claim legality to stay here. It is a shame that criminals have kids.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

I am a white American and it is not benefiting me at all. It may benefit the few that are seeking adopting a baby or kid. I personally think it is a wrong practice. If the kids have a parent then the kids should leave with the parent if that parent wants their kids.He should not be deported until the rights of his kids are addressed or have a lawyer that can be the kids advocates like they do in divorce cases.

I think it should be presumed that the kids will be deported also if there is only one parent and being deported. If there is two parents and one is legal then the kids stay here with that parent. We can't allow the illegal parent to stay because they got lucky to have kids here though. That would make it where the first things an illegal does when get here is to knock up or get pregnant. That would mean they can claim legality to stay here. It is a shame that criminals have kids.

I agree, kick out the illegals, but let the kids go with them if there is no USC parent. To put them up for adoption is cruel; there is definitely a classist and racist agenda behind it.