From Mississippi’s Clarion Ledger:
Immigration advocates are incensed over a Mexican woman’s fight to keep custody of her child after she was reported as an unfit mother two days after giving birth in a Pascagoula hospital.
An e-mail news release sent last week by the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance accuses Singing River Hospital and the Mississippi Department of Human Services of “stealing immigrants’ babies.” The accusation involves Cirila Baltazar Cruz, who gave birth to her daughter, Ruby, Nov. 16 at the hospital.
According to documents obtained by The Clarion-Ledger, staff at the hospital filed a report two days later listing Ruby as a neglected child.
The report says Cruz “was exchanging living arrangements for sex” and planned to adopt out the child before returning to Mexico. The report also noted Cruz “is an illegal immigrant.”
Court records obtained by The Clarion-Ledger indicate Cruz is charged with neglecting her child, in part, because “she has failed to learn the English language” and “was unable to call for assistance for transportation to the hospital” to give birth. Her inability to speak English “placed her unborn child in danger and will place the baby in danger in the future,” according to the document.
In its release, MIRA disputes the accusations leveled against Cruz and says Cruz speaks an indigenous Mexican language, Chatino, spoken by fewer than 50,000 people, and speaks “very little Spanish and no English.” The hospital provided only a Spanish-language interpreter, the release says.
So they somehow determined that she “exchanged living arrangements for sex” and intended to have the baby adopted — even though they didn’t have an interpreter who actually spoke Ms. Cruz’s language? That seems dubious. If you can’t speak her language, then you can’t be certain what her intentions are.
(And by the way, I hate the assumption that if a parent does “exchange living arrangements for sex,” the proper response is for the government to take that parent’s child away. Nor does it make sense to take away a child because their parent is considering adoption.)
Since MIRA was able to find a translator, obviously finding a translator is not, in fact, impossible. Nothing should have been done in this case prior to finding a translator; and to take away a child because the parent(s) doesn’t speak English is disgusting.
Vivirlatino has an interesting post about this case and how the immigration debate is framed.
MIRA’s call to action is below the fold.
Via Flip Flopping Joy and Questioning Transphobia:
Request for Action from the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA):
Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to her baby girl in November of 2008 at Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula, MS. She speaks very little Spanish and no English, as her native language is Chatino, an Indigenous language from Oaxaca, Mexico that is spoken by some 50,000 people.
The hospital provided her with an “interpreter” who is from Puerto Rico and does not speak Chatino, the language of the mother. Because of the language barrier and the misunderstanding by the hospital’s interpreter who only spoke Spanish and English, a social worker was called in.
The hospital’s social worker reported “evidence” of abuse and neglect based on the following:
* The “baby was born to an illegal [sic] immigrant;”
* The “mother had not purchased a crib, clothes, food or formula.” (Most Latina mothers breast feed their babies).
* “She does not speak English which puts baby in danger.”Ms. Baltazar Cruz’s baby was snatched from her after birth at the hospital and given to an affluent attorney couple from the posh Ocean Springs who cannot have children.
The authorities made no effort to locate an interpreter in her native tongue. MIRA located an interpreter who is fluent in Chatino in Los Angeles CA and has interviewed the mother extensively with the interpreters help. The mother has been accused of being poor and not being able to provide for this child. No one has asked the mother to provide evidence of support. She owns a home in Mexico and a store which provides both secure shelter and financial support, not counting the nurturing of a loving family of two other siblings, a grandmother, aunts, uncles and other extended family.
Meanwhile, there is word in the Gulf Coast community that the “parents to be,” have already had a baby shower celebrating the “blessed arrival” of this STOLEN child!
PLEASE MAKE CALLS & WRITE LETTERS DEMANDING THE SAFE RETURN OF BABY & REUNITE WITH HER MOTHER
If you believe this is unjust and outrageous and goes against all moral and religious beliefs and values, please call or write to the presiding Judge and the MS Department of Human Services to STOP this ILLEGAL ADOPTION! Stealing US born babies from immigrant parents is a growing epidemic in the United States. Many Latino parents have lost their children this way!
Honorable Judge Sharon Sigalas
Youth Justice Court of Jackson County
4903 Telephone Rd.
Pascagoula, MS 39567
(228)762-7370Children’s Justice Act Program
MS Dept. of Human Services
750 North State Street
Jackson, MS 39202
Call (601)359-4499 and ask for Barbara ProctorFor more information please call MIRA at: (601) 968-5182
MIRA Organizing Coordinator
Victoria Cintra at (228) 234-1697 or Organizer Socorro Leos at(228) 731-0831
And by the way, I hate the assumption that if a parent does “exchange living arrangements for sex,” the proper response is for the government to take that parent’s child away.
Oddly enough, people who get a specific license stating that they will exchange living arrangements for sex with only one particular person (aka, get married*) are considered to be optimal parents.
Excuse me. I’m concentrating on a clearly peripheral issue in order to not be overwhelmed by the horror of someone having her child taken from her because she speaks the wrong language.
This kind of thing gives me nightmares.
When my twin sons were born 4 years ago, they were 5 weeks premature, I had a C-Section, and had just come out of another pregnancy related surgery and bedrest. Very typically of premature twins, mine were unable to suck, had birth weight issues, and jaundice. Most all of the other babies I have ever known or heard about in this type of situation were given various appropriate treatments such as NICU time, a feeding tube, light therapy for jaundice, and the parents were given consultations from people like lactation and feeding specialists and other support for preemies.
Our children were given none of that. Instead, we were told that DCF was going to be called in because we were unable to feed our children. And left to our own devices, our children would starve. You see, I am deafblind and their father is a quadriplegic. There issues were not considered medical ones, but ones that were blamed on us and our supposed innadequacy as disabled parents.
We did have some advocates on our side and I am very good at advocating for myself (thank god I know English or I’m sure they would have been taken from us.) We were able to take our children home but were watched for the next year. We were offered no support to help us with our preemie twins (from the hospital staff or DCF, we did get help from experts on our own.)
In lieu of the needed light therapy, we had to place our child for several hours a day in sunlight to cure his jaundice. We went to feeding experts, and had several consultations for our other son who wouldn’t eat. None of the “experts” found a way to feed him either using special devices and bottles/nipples. We ended up just literally dripping drops of formula and breastmilk into his mouth every hour around the clock for a solid month until he developed a sucking reflex. It was the worst month of my life. When we needed help the most, when any parent out there would have gotten help from the medical community, we were denied it just so we would be set up to fulfill someone’s low expectations and prejudices about us.
The anger I have for the hospital staff who were so oppressively insensitive to us is still palpable. It is only managed by the fact that now I have two perfectly healthy and developing four and a half year olds that are on target or ahead in every area.
The prejudice that social workers and hospital staff have about who is and is not a good parent is awful when considering the amount of control they have when parents are at their most vulnerable. You bet I will support this woman. This is fucked up beyond belief.
Lexie,
Your story is horrifying. I can’t believe they sent your babies home when they couldn’t suck. I’ve never even heard of such a thing. I’m so glad you all made it through with your family intact and that your children are doing well.
Baltizar Cruz’s story, too, is horrifying and enraging. I don’t really have any words for it.
(And Dianne, I had the same thought.)
(((Lexie)))
I’m so sorry that happened to you (and Cirila, and everyone else this has happened to), but I’m glad you and your husband made it through and your sons are healthy now.
Lexie,
That’s terrifying. Thanks for putting it out there.
Thanks for reporting on this. As many people as possible need to read about this nightmarish abuse of a woman’s (and her child’s) human rights.
Ugh. There are so many problems with social services agencies in this regard, with racism, classism and who gets accused of abuse and neglect. And yet, we can’t really just have no system for trying to assure that children are being capably taken care of.
In the area of indigent defense we see quite a few cases of accused child abuse/neglect where wealthier, whiter parents just would not face the kind of scrutiny and assumption of wrongdoing that our poor, often minority, clients face. It’s deeply troubling, and I think very much related to assumptions of credibility – who is afforded credibility in our society and our legal/health care/social services systems.
There is also a lot of pathologizing poverty and the assumption that poverty = neglect. Once a family is in the system, standards are applied that are not applied to those outside the system. For example, a parent whose child has been temporarily removed may not be able to get the child/children back unless the parent has housing where the child will have its own room (not have to share with the parent) or where children of opposite sex will not have to share a room. I don’t know that there’s any reason to impose those kinds of wealth requirements on returning children to their parents. And loving parents should not be separated from their children because they are homeless or don’t have the money for food. It’s just wrong.
Anyway, I guess I’m roaming a little far afield, but I think there is a real problem in the social services area of not recognizing the HARM inherent in taking children away from their parents. They are often so focused on the fear of not removing a child who ends up seriously harmed, and the bad press associated with that, that they underestimate and fail to account for the harm of taking children even temporarily away from loving and struggling or loving and wrongfully accused parents.
Thanks a lot for sharing this. I did send a letter to the judge. I hope that not only the child will get returned to her birth mother but also the mother and child will receive adequate, necessary support from the government, friends and family.
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((Lexie)) that is ridiculously unfair and completely outside the bounds of good medicine – suckling or other feeding ability was one of the criteria before we could take our preemie home.
I”ve been thinking about immigration and how this case fits into the patterns – first of genocide and cultural extermination attempts against Native people all through the Americas, but also a shift in how the US treats immigrants from Mexico. (partly because, between the raids from the last years of the Bush Administration and the econmy, my neighborhood looks like it might lose half its businesses).
We know that Mexican immigrants with citizenship or with citizen children were forced out of the United States in the ’30s repatriations, and many of them could not prove US citizenship later if they wanted to – or citizenship of their children or grandchildren born in Mexico after repatriation – if it applied (what were the foreign birth with American parent rules in the 40s and 50s?). So some percentage, however small, of undocumented immigrants from Mexico must be citizens or be able to argue for citizenship, even if they don’t know it themselves.
Now, it seems that instead of deporting people with their children there’s been more effort (by parents being deported, and by authorities) to keep citizen children in the US. Why? Just because if there were children being detained in the conditions their parents are in, it would cause more moral outrage? To short-circuit future citizenship questions? Just because we have less respect for mothers than previously? To be as punitive as possible?
This case is part of the general adoption/child services issue in the US but some of the cases I’ve read about the kids are older, not easily-adopted infants.
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