Over the past two years, tens of thousands of asylum-seeking families have arrived in New York City, seeking safety and a new start. These families find temporary housing in Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers (HERRCs) and begin the arduous process of rebuilding their lives. They must navigate city agencies, enroll their children in school, address physical and mental health issues from their journey, and attend immigration appointments, often without legal assistance.
Parent defenders at the Center for Family Representation (CFR), whose Manhattan office serves neighborhoods with many HERRC shelters, have noticed a disturbing trend. Family Court neglect filings against non-citizen parents often lead to the removal of their children into the foster system. The Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) and Family Court judges make these decisions without fully understanding the families’ circumstances or the severe impact of family separation on immigrant children.
HERRC shelters are generally unaccommodating for non-English speaking immigrants. They lack childcare and cooking facilities, and some staff only speak English. This disconnect leads to misunderstandings and unwarranted prosecutions of immigrant parents for minor infractions, causing significant harm to their children. CFR attorneys have represented non-citizen parents in cases that should never have been filed. Parents returning from work, medical appointments, or errands have found their children reported to the police or ACS for being left in the care of a neighbor or alone in their shelter room.
In one instance, a parent was accused of neglect and child endangerment for arguing with a spouse after a tough day. Another parent faced charges for rough handling out of frustration, leading to a call to ACS for “excessive corporal punishment.” Even bringing outside food to feed their children has led to police and ACS involvement. Alarmingly, ACS and Family Court judges sometimes use the challenges of the parents’ migration journeys against them, viewing these hardships as evidence of parental irresponsibility.
The detrimental effects of family separation on immigrant children are well-documented. In 2018, pediatricians and mental health professionals warned about the long-term health impacts of the family separation policy at the Southern border. According to the Children’s Health Fund (CHF), separated children are at higher risk for PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance use disorders, and suicidality. Some children continue to suffer from these symptoms even after reuniting with their families, showing behaviors like crying, loss of appetite, nightmares, difficulty sleeping, and persistent fear.
Recently, ACS removed the child of an asylum seeker client of CFR. The child, terrified, ran away from his crowded placement and hid in a school closet all day. Although the family is now reunited, they remain deeply traumatized.
The Family Court Act mandates that a judge must determine the necessity of removal to avoid imminent risk to the child and consider whether staying in the home is contrary to the child’s best interests. Judges must also assess whether the child protective agency could have avoided removal by taking other measures. We urge ACS workers and Family Court judges to recognize the hardships immigrant families face and to consider the undeniable science showing that family separation harms children.