All families have the constitutional right to be safe and secure in their homes. Yet every day, police officers and caseworkers forcefully enter homes, wake children safely sleeping in their beds, and rip them from their parents’ care — all without a court order authorizing these interventions. This practice, when not absolutely necessary, is inhumane. It is also illegal. In New York City, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) is authorized to remove children without a court order only under emergency circumstances, yet ACS exercises this extreme power roughly half of the time. Once the courts scrutinize these so-called “emergency” removals, nearly a third of children are returned to their parents’ care.   

This atrocity traumatizes children and parents. The Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policies that tore thousands of children from their parents at the border showed the intuitive injustice and inhumanity of forcefully separating families. Responses from psychologists, pediatricians, and policymakers shed light on the irreversible consequences. Even if removals are temporary, the consequences are not. Removals traumatically disrupt children’s connections to their parents, siblings, friends, schools, and communities, damaging their mental health and emotional development. Extensive research demonstrates that children experience long-lasting trauma and harm when separated from their families and placed into the foster system.