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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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