Photos: The Battle for Alexa
As the deportees were led off the plane onto the steamy San Salvador tarmac, an anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: "They want to steal my daughter!"
It had been 10 weeks since Ramos last held her 2-year-old, Alexa. Ten weeks since she was arrested crossing the border into Texas and U.S. immigration authorities seized her daughter and told her she would never see the girl again.
What followed — one foster family's initially successfully attempt to win full custody of Alexa — reveals what could happen to some of the infants, children and teens taken from their families at the border under a Trump administration policy earlier this year. The "zero-tolerance" crackdown ended in June, but hundreds of children remain in detention, shelters or foster care and U.S. officials say more than 200 are not eligible for reunification or release. – Associated Press
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Five-year-old Alexa laughs with her mother, Araceli Ramos, while riding a merry-go-round at a park in San Miguel, El Salvador, on Aug. 18, 2018. Ramos scraped together $6,000 to pay a smuggler who could help her escape from the man who she said warned her she'd "never be at peace." On the month-long, 1,500-mile pilgrimage, she carried Alexa, a change of clothes, diapers, cookies, juice and water. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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Araceli Ramos holds her 5-year-old daughter, Alexa, on her lap during an interview in a park in San Miguel, El Salvador, on Aug. 18, 2018. The federal government offers all deported parents the chance to take their children with them, but Ramos said she was ordered to sign a waiver to leave Alexa behind. "The agent put his hand on mine, he held my hand, he forced me to sign," she said. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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In this Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018 photo, Chris Palusky, President and CEO of Bethany Christian Services, one of the nation’s largest adoption agencies, explains their long term foster care program from their headquarters in Grand Rapids, Mich. “We never want families to be separated,” Palusky said. “That’s what we’re about, is bringing families together.” (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
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This Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018 photo shows the Bethany Christian Services in Grand Rapids, Mich. Bethany is one of the nation’s largest adoption agencies. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
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In this Friday, Aug. 24, 2018 photo, Sarah Zuidema, a former Bethany Christian Services supervisor, poses in Grand Rapids, Mich. As the agency started receiving more Central American children, several former Bethany social workers said they were encouraged to recruit new foster families at the agency’s traditional base, the Christian Reformed Church, and other local churches. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
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Five-year-old Alexa wears shoes depicting characters from Disney's "Frozen" movie as she and her mother Araceli Ramos meet with Associated Press journalists in a park in San Miguel, El Salvador, on Aug. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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In this Aug. 18, 2018 photo, staff at the Combi Rock Cafe prepare beef, ribs, and tacos from the back of a converted van as the family-owned street restaurant celebrates its one year anniversary, in San Miguel, El Salvador. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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In this Aug. 19, 2018 photo, pigeons take flight in front of the cathedral in San Miguel, El Salvador. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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Araceli Ramos sheds a tear as she describes her battle to be reunited with her 5-year-old daughter, Alexa, during an interview in a park in San Miguel, El Salvador, on Aug. 18, 2018. In Ramos' darkest days, she would lay on her bed, stare at the ceiling and sob, her hand on her stomach. "This girl, she was here, in my womb," she said. "We are meant to be together. Always." (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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Five-year-old Alexa peers over the back of her chair as her mother, Araceli Ramos, speaks during an interview in a park in San Miguel, El Salvador, on Aug. 18, 2018. Returning to El Salvador in February 2017, Alexa had lost all her Spanish and spoke English to her mother, using words like "water" and "chicken." Ramos, who spoke almost no English herself, had to point to pictures or call friends to translate. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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In this Aug. 18, 2018 photo, cars drive along a commercial avenue in San Miguel, El Salvador. More than 26,000 people were deported from the US and Mexico to this Central American country last year. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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In this Aug. 18, 2018 photo, commuters ride in the back of a pickup as night falls in San Miguel, El Salvador. More than 26,000 people were deported from the US and Mexico to this Central American country last year. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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Araceli Ramos, with her five-year-old daughter, Alexa, peering over her shoulder, looks through Facebook pictures posted by Alexa's former foster family in Michigan, during an interview in a park in San Miguel, El Salvador, on Aug. 18, 2018. The Barrs, Kory, a physical therapist at a nearby rehabilitation hospital, and his wife, Sherri, who ran a home-organization business, had three daughters who were raised in a devout home and already had fostered two Salvadoran sisters in 2013. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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In this Aug. 19, 2018 photo, a man looks at newspapers in front of a small mural in central San Miguel, El Salvador. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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In this Aug. 18, 2018 photo, people eat inside a popular pupuseria, a restaurant serving traditional Salvadoran tortillas stuffed with savory fillings, in San Miguel, El Salvador. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Need for foster families rises as more Arizona children are being removed from home
UpdatedThe number of Arizona children being removed from their homes has increased sharply in recent months, and some of them are in shelters waiting for placement in a foster home.
That’s what Mike Faust, director of the Arizona Department of Child Safety, outlined in a email last weekend asking Arizona’s foster families to take in more children.
“This morning there were 25+ children and youth at the Welcome Center, and despite efforts throughout the day, there are still 18 children and youth requiring placement with families able to meet their needs,” Faust wrote in an email sent Oct. 31.
“Over the past seven months we have seen many challenges facing the child welfare system and our communities. Regretfully those challenges persist as the public-health crisis continues.”
The increase is due to more child maltreatment reports coming in from law enforcement, Faust said in an interview Thursday. Those reports increased about 15 to 20% each week for the last few months, he said, while calls to the state’s hotline overall remain much lower than usual.
Unlike ordinary times when teachers or other school staff are the ones typically calling the state’s hotline, these calls are now coming to the DCS from police.
A common example is domestic violence, when police might come across children in a home needing help, Faust said.
But Richard Wexler, executive director for the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, said this is typical for Arizona, where he says high rates of poverty lead to a child removal instead of help being provided to the family.
“Arizona child welfare is responding to this crisis the way Arizona child welfare always responds to a crisis: Take the child and run,” Wexler said. “Some of the increase in alleged abuse may be real, but the track record of Arizona child welfare suggests most of it is due to the fact that there is now more poverty and Arizona routinely confuses poverty with ‘neglect.’”
The pandemic is “putting more stress on everyone — that’s why some small portion of the increase may be real,” Wexler said.
Mandated reporters who are led to think that children who are out of sight are being abused in “pandemic proportions” are going to be reactionary, Wexler said.
“Why do we rush to assume that for poor people in general, and poor nonwhite people in particular, the only way they’ll cope with it is to beat up their children?”
Data from the DCS show the number of calls for neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse have climbed each month since July, with 2,411 calls for neglect in July compared to 2,754 in September. Calls about physical abuse rose from 848 to 1,174, and calls about sexual abuse rose from 140 to 179 for those two months.
Over the same time, the number of children put into state care in Arizona rose from 775 in July to 964 in September.
Some foster families are apprehensive about taking in new children because of COVID-19, Faust said.
“There’s also the uncertainty of schools,” he said of prospective foster families. “If you are working, how do you support them if school goes virtual?”
There were 13,485 children in out-of-home care as of late September.
