For more than a year, a Honduran woman has been trying to get the state of Georgia to return her four small children.
She was deported in 2017. But the children are in foster care here _ and so far, the state hasn't agreed to give them back.
As the family's separation drags on, the mother has grown desperate, the Honduran consul general of Atlanta said.
While the separation of children from their immigrant parents at the border created a national uproar this summer, similar separations have been taking place hundreds of miles away from those border crossings. In Georgia, when a parent is deported or detained, children may be placed in foster care if other parents or relatives aren't available to care for them. When that happens, the families may have to endure long separations while parents go through a difficult process to try to win their children back, according to lawyers and officials of other countries who are involved in the custody cases.
In the case of the Honduran mother, a judge won't even be able to consider the children's fate until a hearing scheduled for October. The consulate said the case has had a series of delays, the most recent because Georgia apparently misplaced a key document when a new caseworker took over.
"It's unbelievable," said Angelina Maria Williams Guillen, an official at the Honduran consulate in Atlanta who has been working on the case for months, providing all the necessary documents to show that the mother is fit to care for her children.
When a child is a U.S. citizen, as is the youngest of the Honduran woman's children, the separation can last for months, even years. Georgia doesn't have a policy to reunite deported parents when their children are U.S citizens and end up in foster care, advocates say. In some cases, they say, judges and case workers argue that children who were born in the United States are better off in foster care in the U.S. than with deported parents who were forced back to Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador.
"To us, that is a very large concern," said F. Javier Diaz, the consul general of Mexico in Atlanta.
Tom Rawlings, interim director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children's Services, was appointed just a month ago, said it is a significant issue and one he has already started working to address. "It's important to get this straightened out because it's an issue of human rights and it's an issue of family rights," he said.
Rawlings became familiar with the problem when he was in private practice as an attorney and occasionally handled cases involving children for the Mexican consulate in Atlanta. "We need to remember that just because a parent is deported, that does not justify the termination of that parent's relationship with the child," Rawlings said. "Borders don't determine your parental ability."
Children aren't placed in foster care every time a parent is detained or deported. If someone is arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency lets the parent decide who should take custody of any children, spokesman Bryan D. Cox said. Often, another parent or relative in the U.S. takes the children.
If a parent is a sole caregiver, Cox said ICE considers that when deciding whether to detain the person. If ICE does take a parent into custody and the parent does not name someone to take the children, state child welfare officials are brought in, he said.
For children who do end up in foster care, a complicated system kicks in involving case workers, foster parents, attorneys and a judge.
Some families fight with the state over their parental rights and can face unrealistic requirements, given that the parent cannot legally return to the U.S. for hearings or other requirements, said Bernadette Olmos, an Atlanta lawyer who has represented immigrant parents in family law cases.
DFCS does not track the number of foster care cases that involve deportations or detentions of immigrant parents.
The Mexican consulate in Atlanta does track its cases and said it is frequently contacted by parents seeking help. The consulate said that it has been involved in dozens of such custody cases in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, with many taking years to complete.
Since 2015, the consulate has taken temporary custody of children in 28 cases so it can fly children to Mexico to be reunited with their parents.
Diaz said he proposed two years ago that DFCS sign an agreement which would establish protocols for getting the consulate involved in cases. The consulate says it isn't always contacted and sometimes only finds out about a case if the deported parent contacts the consulate.
Rawlings said he was aware of the need for this agreement and started working on it during his first week in office. He said he hopes to "get that signed as soon as possible."
What lawyers and advocates especially want to change is the notion that living in the United States is more valuable than being raised by a parent.
Diaz said that in some cases, the consulate observed a prejudice against sending a child to Mexico. "The best option for a child is to be reunited with his or her immediate family, and that option should be exhausted before exploring any other," Diaz said.
Ashley Willcott, an attorney who has spent a career on cases involving child advocacy, said she has also seen DFCS officials and courts in Georgia that opposed sending U.S. citizen kids to be with their parents in Mexico.
"Children need to go with their parents, that's the reality, so long as there's no neglect or abuse by the parents," Willcott said.
