Children's Legal Rights Journal - Spring 2013

Improving Our Child Welfare System
It was estimated, in the recent Shattered Families report, that at least
5, 100 children were then living in state foster care because their
parents had either been detained or deported. 42 It has also been
estimated that children living with a foreign born parent comprise as
much as 9. 6 percent of all children who come to the attention of the
child welfare system, many of them who have been living in mixed
status families, where at least one family member is undocumented. 43
Four out of five of these children are U.S. citizens; two-thirds are
Hispanic. 44

II. Recommendations for Addressing the Immigration-Child
Welfare Nexus
As I studied the implications for child welfare agencies
handling the influx of cases involving immigrant children and
families, I noted that, other than in a few states, there is a complete
absence of child welfare agency policy and law on the immigration-
child welfare nexus.
A. Critical Areas of Child Welfare Law
In one of my first conference presentations on this topic, I
suggested seven critical areas of child welfare law and policy reform:
( 1) serving child immigrant abuse and neglect victims; ( 2) placing
children with undocumented family members; ( 3) developing written
[hereinafter SHATTERED FAMILIES], available at http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies;
see also Ray Sanchez, Deportations Leave Behind Thousands of Children in Foster
Care, HUFFINGTON POST: LATINO VOICES, Nov. 3, 2011,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/02/deportation-immigrant-children-foster-
care_n_1072553.html.
42 SHATTERED FAMILIES, supra note 41, at 6.
43 Id. at 64 n. 50.
44 Id.

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