Judge clears path for 1-year-old girl to be reunited with mother

A judge has cleared the way for a one-year-old girl in foster care to be reunited with her birth mother who is scheduled to be deported to Guatemala and currently is in custody of U.S. Immigration and Enforcement.

In an order released Friday, Judge Sara Walter Combs, with the Kentucky Court of Appeals, rejected an emergency appeal by the foster parents who opposed the move and argued they had not had sufficient input into the decision about the child they had cared for since shortly after birth.

In an order that provided more information about the case — which had been confidential, under rules of family court — Combs found details of the case have been “misrepresented and distorted by unwarranted publication in social media or otherwise.”

“Mother has suffered hardship, prosecution, incarceration, and the deprivation of her newborn infant for more than a year,” it said.

Further, it said Jefferson Family Court Judge Angela Johnson, who is overseeing the case and had ruled in favor of reunification of the child with the mother, “meticulously sorted out the truth of her trauma” in deciding to return the child to the mother only to have her decision “unjustifiably frustrated and delayed.”

And foster parents, the order said, have never had custody of the girl and state laws “do not give any foster parent a custodial interest in children under their care” nor standing, or legal authority, to pursue the case, it said. 

The child had been scheduled to be returned by the foster parents to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services on Sept. 7, which in turn was to give the child to ICE for reunification with the mother before they both were to travel to Guatemala, according to court records. The transfer was delayed when the foster parents filed an emergency appeal last week with the appeals court seeking to block the move.

Lawyers for the mother and foster parents, who are not identified in Combs’ ruling, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Johnson, the judge in the case, has cautioned parties about public comments on a family court case which by law is confidential.

Combs’ public ruling Friday, based on filings with the appeals court that also were deemed confidential, sheds more light on the mother’s circumstances.

It says that she had a “difficult journey” from Guatemala during which she was sexually assaulted, resulting in a pregnancy, which she carried to term after arriving in the United States.

The mother, 20, speaks no English or Spanish, only a Mayan dialect known as K’iche, which is rare enough that few interpretation services are available, the order said.

The mother did not seek medical help and gave birth to the baby alone at home.

The court does not know whether the mother chose to have the baby because of moral convictions, lack of access to reproductive health care or language barriers that prevented her from seeking help, the order said.

After the birth, she took the child to the hospital seeking help and was charged with abuse after officials suspected mistreatment. Combs’ order said the mother’s inability to communicate was a factor in her prosecution and separation from her child.

 She was jailed and released after pleading guilty in July to wanton endangerment but was then detained by ICE because she is undocumented. She currently is at a detention camp in Louisiana and ICE has delayed deportation to allow the mother to reunite with her child, Combs’ order said.

Combs’s order said the “intolerable reality” is that the family will be unable to reunite if the mother is deported without her child, adding the court “will not allow the foster parents to frustrate the family’s reunification when they lack standing; have never had legal custody of the child; and were given notice and opportunity to be heard before the family court.”