Thread: U.S. kids in Foster Care Parents Fighting Deportation

http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/183691.html

U.S.-born kids were in foster care as parents fought deportation
By ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@MiamiHerald.com
Blanca Banegas, her husband and two young sons came to Miami in December to visit friends. But Miami police thought the van with Texas plates that was carrying the family looked suspicious. One officer kept probing as if Banegas were not the mother of her two boys.

Then police ran her name through a federal list. Hers popped up as an undocumented immigrant who had been ordered deported in 1999. Police called immigration agents. Banegas' Miami vacation -- and her life in America -- began to unravel.

The Honduran couple from Texas ended up in immigration detention awaiting deportation -- their American children handed over to Florida foster care. And Banegas knew nothing of their whereabouts.

The episode is the first documented South Florida case of children seized by the state upon immigration officers' arrest of the parents. There are no official state or national figures, though immigration advocates say there have been other cases in South Florida.

Separating immigrant parents from their U.S.-born children has become controversial as immigration authorities step up raids of undocumented immigrants who have been ordered deported.

For two months while in detention Banegas, 27, had no idea where her sons Joshua, 7, and Jasuat, then 5, were living. Her common-law husband Eddy Tome, 39, knew the children had been turned over to the state, but didn't know how to reach Banegas.

''I felt hysterical and lost,'' said Banegas, who fled Honduras in 1999 after Hurricane Mitch and would have qualified for Temporary Protected Status to stay and work in the United States had she applied for TPS. Banegas never did.

When foreign parents and children are held for deportation, the family is kept together in detention -- or a parent is detained while the other, typically the mother, is released under supervision to care for the kids.

But when the children are U.S. citizens, procedures seem less clear-cut. Immigration does not detain American children at facilities.

The case also raises questions about the role of the Miami Police Department, whose chief, John Timoney, an Irish immigrant, has repeatedly insisted his officers won't ask about a person's immigration status -- unless they suspect a crime.

`I PAID MY DEBT'

Banegas, who worked in a restaurant, has no criminal record. Tome, however, has a felony record in Texas. Even though the construction worker served his time, he remained deportable.

Tome said that after pleading guilty to selling crack cocaine to an undercover agent in 1994, he spent 2 ½ years in jail -- but later rebuilt his life.

''What I did was a reflection of inexperience, the excesses of youth,'' he said by telephone. ``After I paid my debt to society, I devoted myself to the children.''

In a statement prepared by her attorneys in March, Banegas said, ``We had a decent, simple life.''

Police initially suspected the van in which Banegas, her family and nine others were traveling was being used for migrant smuggling, a case record indicates.

Delrish Moss, a Miami police spokesman, said the officers' actions did not contradict Timoney's immigration stance because they were investigating what they suspected was a possible crime.

''We do not proactively go out and ask people about their immigration status,'' said Moss. ``We are not the immigration police.''

The jitney in which the family was riding had arrived near its Little Havana destination when it came upon a car that police had stopped at Southwest Eighth Street and I-95.

An officer approached the van and started asking questions when officers saw the driver unloading Banegas' luggage as the family prepared to get to their friends' home nearby at 3 a.m. on Dec. 15. Within hours, Banegas and her husband were in immigration custody. She thought her husband would keep the children after she was transported to detention.

''They told me to say goodbye to my husband and kids,'' she recalled.

`NO JUSTIFICATION'

Cheryl Little, executive director of Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, which helped represent Banegas, said the case is one of several in Florida in recent months. ''Immigration officials have every right to deport persons without legal status,'' said Little. ``However, there is no justification for treating persons like Blanca so harshly and failing for so long to let her know what had happened to her children.''

Barbara Gonzalez, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami, said ICE intended to turn the children over to Tome until officers discovered a few hours after the couple had been stopped that he had a criminal background. ICE officers decided to contact the Department of Children and Families because Banegas had already been transported to a Broward detention center.

''It's unfortunate parents place U.S.-born children in these difficult situations by breaking immigration law,'' Gonzalez said. ``However, ICE officials are obligated under the law to remove those who have been ordered deported.''

Officials at DCF would not talk about the Banegas case because of confidentiality laws, and DCF spokesman Al Zimmerman said his agency does not have figures on how many U.S.-born children of deportable immigrants are turned over to his agency.

More than three million American children are living in families in which at least one parent is undocumented, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. American Fraternity, a Sweetwater-based immigrant rights group, has asked the Supreme Court to prohibit deportation of undocumented parents with U.S.-born children.

BOYS CRIED

During the police stop, Banegas said one of the officers began questioning the boys, and they began to cry.

Joshua told his mother the officer said, ``You don't look like your mother and father.''

She showed the children's birth certificates and Social Security cards to police, but when they asked her for her papers, she had none. Police called immigration officers.

Banegas was taken to the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, and a few hours later her husband was transported to the Krome detention center in west Miami-Dade. He was deported in January.

She didn't see her children again until Valentine's Day. By then, she had missed Christmas with her family, been sent from the Broward facility to one in Texas and then returned to South Florida.

When the social worker finally brought the children to visit her, Joshua and Jasuat were living with a foster mother they called Rosie.

''When I saw them we all started crying,'' Banegas recalled of the meeting. ``They didn't know my husband was deported to Honduras. They didn't know where I went either. My eldest son asked why I and his father had abandoned him.''

When Banegas explained that she had no papers to stay in the United States, the children quickly offered to give her theirs.

'My younger son . . . said, `Yes, Mommy, why can't you have ours if you need them?' ''

TOGETHER

Now, Banegas is facing the bittersweet reality of having her family together again in a country where she no longer wants to live.

Banegas was reunited with her children just before she boarded the plane home in Miami on March 28. Her husband was waiting for them in Honduras. The family lives in a small apartment near the capital, Tegucigalpa. Banegas said the boys have had a rough time adjusting.

''The oldest got seriously ill one time,'' she said. 'He doesn't want to eat much and gets very sad. He tells me, `Mommy, I want to go back up there.' But I don't have the means to send them.''

We these children born after either one of them were ordered deported?

I couldn't do the math on this.

Also, I wonder if they were 'seized' because they were citizens and the parents weren't or if it was a suspicion of something else.

A young lady I knew had a bi-racial baby (black/white). She took a day trip from Seattle to Canada and they detained her at the border, coming back. They thought the baby wasn't hers and was possibly kidnapped. She had to get someone to fax a copy of the birth certificate and photos of her and the baby, etc., before they would let her and the baby go.

The kids were anchor babies.

Except the anchor broke. They were in the country illegally and they knew it "If you can't do the time don't do the crime".

Moved from News & Releases from Other Groups to News Stories from ALIPAC Members

The 14th Amendment does not grant US Citizenship to foreigners, to say it does is an abuse of our Constitution.

Illegal Alien Parents - stop using your children as shields and take them home now! You are making us even more disgusted with you all! You are going to lose this fight, by 'hook or by crook'. We will not allow you to turn our country into a Brazilized piece of crap. You are on notice, get out!

This is just an another example of why we need to change the birthright law, or at least clarify its true intent.

I have said this before and will say it again. If a child is born in the United States and the mother is not here legally then they do not qualify for any foodstamps, welfare, section 8 housing, etc. Then anchor babies will become less desirable.

We these children born after either one of them were ordered deported?
I couldn't do the math on this.

It looks like the 2 illegals decided they wanted kids right after she was ordered deported, not before.

The crack dealer blames "youth"? What was he, 26? He makes it sound like he was a teenager when he was out selling his drugs instead of closer to 30.

They can't accept responsibility for anything they do, they have to blame other people, or youthful indiscretions after the age most people have grown up. Maybe the kids should have been kept by the state if these parents can't even own up to what they did and show some remorse instead of playing the blame game.