A long-standing rule may have been violated by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) after a seventeen-year-old immigrant teen living in foster care was placed in ICE custody on Monday.
The DCF, which reported the teen to ICE, appeared to violate its own rule by contacting ICE. For thirty years, the DCF's Undocumented Child Rule has protected children in need of welfare screening, with the department supposed to be responding to reports of abuse "without regard to the immigration status."
“No such status check or other contact shall be made for the purpose of seeking the child’s or the family’s detention by [immigration authorities] or the initiation or resumption of deportation or exclusion proceedings against the child or the child’s family, irrespective of the outcome of the dependency proceeding," the rule reads in part. It goes on to say that no staff member of the DCF should put an immigrant child in custody.
The teen, from Honduras and identified only as "Henry," was taken away from his foster family in Pensacola, Florida, "in handcuffs and leg irons," the Miami Herald reported. Henry's mother was previously deported, and DCF noted in reports that he may be the victim of prior labor trafficking.
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The Trump-era policy change "puts Florida children at risk, and introduces a new chilling effect on reports to the [state’s] child abuse hotline. Reports about undocumented families are already low," children's attorney and former director of Miami-Dade's private foster care agency, Fran Allegra, told the Herald. "This shift makes the chance for reporting, and, therefore, rescuing kids, less likely.”
Henry is currently in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. He does not yet have an order for deportation, sources told the Herald.
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