Nebraska Supreme Court: State Wrongfully Took Children From Immigrant Mom

The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that the state acted improperly when it terminated a Guatemalan woman’s rights to her two U.S. citizen children after she was detained on charges of falsely identifying herself to a police officer and deported.The woman was working in a local meat-processing plant a year later when social service workers went to her house with a police officer to check on whether she was properly tending to her severely ill daughter. Frightened that she would be arrested on immigration charges, Ms. Luis told the officer she was a babysitter.  She was arrested that day, after the police discovered the lie. Her children, ages 1 and 7, were placed with protective services.

The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Ms. Luis was deported without being given an opportunity to appeal in state court for custody of her children. For more on this story, click here and here. For the opinion, see Download S08-919[1]

KJ