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View Full Version : Re: Guatemalan woman wants state to return her children


LaVonne Carlson
August 19th 03, 03:01 AM
wrote:

> http://www.theindependent.com/stories/081403/new_Guatemalan14.shtml
>
> Guatemalan woman wants state to return her children
>
> By Kevin O'Hanlon
> The Associated Press
> Publication Date: 08/14/03
>
> LINCOLN -- A Guatemalan woman who was deported after seeking asylum in the
> United States is battling the state to regain custody of her two young
> children.
>
> The Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest and the state's Foster
> Care Review board say Nebraska officials were wrong to take custody of
> Mercedes Santiago-Felipe's children before her deportation more than two
> years ago.
>
> "Once she was deported, the judge and the legal system treated her as if
> she had abandoned her children," said Milo Mumgaard, an Appleseed lawyer in
> Lincoln. "It's like they said she walked away from her kids."
>
> Lawyers on the other side, however, argue that Santiago-Felipe has made no
> attempts to contact state officials or her children since being deported
> and that the children seem well-adjusted in their foster home. Furthermore,
> they said, Santiago-Felipe's son has said he is scared of his mother.
>
> The Nebraska Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case in October.
>
> Santiago-Felipe, an illiterate Mayan Indian, sought asylum in the United
> States in 1993 during Guatemala's civil war. Her father was among an
> estimated 200,000 killed in the war, which ended in 1996.
>
> She eventually settled in Grand Island with her two children -- Mainor, now
> 8, and Estella, now 6. The children were born in the United States to
> Santiago-Felipe and a Guatemalan man, who later abandoned the family.
>
> Santiago-Felipe eked out a living at a meatpacking plant and doing house
> work. But that all started to unravel in November 2000, when Mainor's
> teacher noticed a red mark on his face.
>
> School officials and police said they counseled Santiago-Felipe, who speaks
> some Spanish but is fluent only in her native Mayan dialect, on proper ways
> to discipline her children and warned her that she could be arrested if she
> didn't comply.
>
> "They didn't have much of any interpreter," Mumgaard said. "They had a
> person that speaks some Spanish who tried to communicate with her, but it
> was never sure if she understood what was going on."
>
> Four months later, a counselor noticed another red mark on Mainor's face --
> punishment for not getting ready for school, the boy said.
>
> Police arrested Santiago-Felipe and charged her with misdemeanor child
> abuse and the children were placed in foster care.
>
> She has not seen or talked with her children since her arrest in March
> 2001, Mumgaard said.
>
> Santiago-Felipe was kept in jail and then deported two months after her
> arrest because immigration officials had a "hold" on her for missing a
> hearing years earlier in Florida on her asylum application.
>
> Hall County Court Judge Philip Martin Jr. authorized the permanent
> placement of her children in foster care and her parental rights were
> terminated in September 2002.
>
> "She was provided no legal counsel or legal advice when she was in ... jail
> to represent her on immigration issues, specifically that she could contest
> her removal and remain in the United States to seek reunification with her
> children," Mumgaard said.
>
> At one point, welfare officials recommended that the children be placed
> with Santiago-Felipe's brother in Alabama. However, the children's
> court-appointed guardian objected, saying the oldest child feared possibly
> being reunited with his mother and became extremely anxious during and
> after a phone call from his uncle in Alabama.
>
> The state's Foster Care Review Board, which only serves in an advisory
> role, has determined the children were inappropriately removed from
> Santiago-Felipe's home.
>
> "The case is now in a very bad situation," the board said in a report filed
> with Hall County Court last year. "One can only imagine the sorrow this
> mother must be feeling."
>
> The board said even though Santiago-Felipe might have slapped her son, that
> was not enough to prove the children were in imminent danger.
>
> "It seems excessive that these children should be permanently separated
> from the only parent they have for something that, had it occurred in
> Lincoln or Omaha, might not have even warranted a ticket," the board wrote.
>
> The board recommended that the state arrange for Santiago-Felipe to return
> to the United States on a special visa so she could fight for the custody
> of her children.
>
> "These recommendations were ignored," Mumgaard said. "Once certain
> decisions were made ... it was inevitable that she was going to lose her
> parental rights."
>
> Rachel Daugherty, the children's court-appointed guardian, said it was
> right to take the children from their mother.
>
> "The court has repeatedly held that where the parent is unable or unwilling
> to rehabilitate himself or herself within a reasonable time, the best
> interests of the children require termination of the parental rights," she
> said in briefs submitted in the case.
>
> Mumgaard said the Appleseed Center is trying to get immigration officials
> to let Santiago-Felipe return to see her children.
>
> "But it's very difficult," he said. ----
>
> On The Net:
>
> Nebraska Appleseed Center: http://www.appleseeds.net
>
> Nebraska Health and Human Services System: http://www.hhs.state.ne.us/
>
> Nebraska Supreme Court: http://court.nol.org/
>
> Immigration and Naturalization Service: http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/
>
> © The Grand Island Independent