The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA)

Television has shown recently several cases of illegal immigrant women claiming for their children who were given in adoption while their mothers were imprisoned or deported. After women finishing their sentences they try to recover their children, but they realized that they have lost the parental rights under the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which requires states to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Is that situation right? Should be the children taken away from their mothers? In my opinion, this is a dramatic situation that should not occur because it affects the biological and adoptive mothers, but at the end, the most affected is the child.
First of all, it is important to mention that every year hundreds of women cross the U.S.-Mexico border looking for a better live for them and for their children. They leave their countries most of the time due to extreme poverty. They are able to arrive to the American territory thanks to coyotes. Once they enter into the U.S., these women and their families must pay large amount of money to these human dealers. In the case that they do not pay, their lives and their relatives’ lives are jeopardized. In order to pay that money, undocumented woman have to work intense hours without mentioning that they have to live with constant fear of being caught by the immigration authorities and being deported. There is a high probability that these ladies be caught by the authorities, and when it occur, they will be send to the prison or deported or both. When the children are separated from their mothers, they are sent to the foster care waiting for their parents to pick them up. However, according to the ASFA, parental rights can be terminated if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. After that time, the children can be given in adoption. Once undocumented mother are deported or incarcerated, they realize that after few months, they lose their children and start the process to recover them. This dramatic situation can be demonstrated through three cases: Encarnacion Bail Romero, Maria Luis and Lucia Leon. All of these are undocumented mothers who have lost their children in raids. These mothers lost their parental rights over their children while they were imprisoned and deported. The first case is the Guatemalan mother, Encarnacion Bail Romero. According to an article named, "After Losing Freedom, Some Immigrants Face Loss of Custody of Their Children," published on the New York Times, she was arrested in a raided in the poultry processing plant where she was working. She was sent to the prison. “A year and a half after she went to jail, a county court terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to her child on grounds of abandonment. Carlos, now 2, was adopted by a local couple.” The judge said, “The only certainties in the biological mother’s future,” he wrote, “is that she will remain incarcerated until next year, and that she will be deported thereafter.” Ms. Bail’s case is unfair because she did not abandon her son. Her son was carried away by the authorities. At the same as Encarnacion, Maria Luis and Lucia Leon also lost their parental rights over their children while they were imprisoned. Even though that these women are undocumented, poor and imprisoned, they should not lose their parental rights because they are mothers, and the fact that they are separated from their children is painful. Their children should be sent to the fore care homes until their mothers finish their jail sentences.
Besides the severe punishments that undocumented mothers face such as jail, deportation, losing their children, their children and adoptive families also suffer. It is not easy for adoptive families follow all the adoption process, adopt a child for a while and after lose him or her. When families adopt children, they do not expect that their children will be claimed by their biological parents. When they adopt a child, it is expected that they love and protect him or her and offering him or her basic needs such as food, housing, education, clothing among other needs. Once biological mothers begin the process to recover their children, their adoptive parents also begin a process to avoid lose them. Both families suffer because of the custody, and of course, who most suffer is the child, when he or she is separated from their parents whatever they be biological or adoptive. This process on children it also related to the age. If they are in age that they still remember their biological mother, it will be really painful for them to adapt to their adoptive families, and it will be pleasant for them to be with their biological parents again. Another scenario is when children are too little to remember their biological mothers. If they win the custody, it will be painful for the children. It is like begin the process of adaptation again which will be traumatic. The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) just focuses on the physical or material needs that children have, but it does not focus on the emotional aspects of the children and families. Also, none one says how these kids will react when they grow up and understand that their biological parents did not give them away that it was the government that forced their parents to be away from their own children. Could it cause a unpatriotic feeling? Due to The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) is relatively recent (1997) it is still soon to observe the social impact of the act. In brief, in order to avoid the children’s, and biological and adoptive mothers’ suffering, governments should not give in adoption kids while their parents are incarcerate or deported. The decision of giving a child in adoption should be the parents’ will.