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Guatemalan woman wants state to return her children



 
 
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Old August 14th 03, 06:55 PM
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Default Guatemalan woman wants state to return her children

http://www.theindependent.com/storie...emalan14.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
 




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