DCFS prepares to care for children of immigrants facing deportation

In the days following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Illinois attorney Marleen Suarez has received a flood of clients asking her to prepare paperwork to turn their children to friends, family, or even strangers, if they are deported.

Suarez offered to prepare free conditional guardianships for parents facing possible deportation. She advertised the service in a social media post last month. As of Tuesday afternoon, her office has done more than 100.

Trump has vowed to carry out the “largest mass deportation in history.” He wasted no time on Inauguration Day before signing multiple immigration-related executive orders, including ones seeking to end birthright citizenship and pausing refugee admissions.

“People are very frightened. They don’t know what to do or where to turn,” Suarez said. “Some have never been involved with the legal system before, and they have a deep distrust.”

The American Immigration Council found that from 2010 to 2014, about 1 in 10 Illinois children was a U.S. citizen living with at least one undocumented family member. In 2019, ICE deported 27,980 people with U.S.-born children.

That same year, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law that ensures undocumented parents that are detained or deported by ICE can entrust their chosen guardian to access medical care, enroll a child in school or day care to prevent the child from being taken into state care.

“It would be disastrous for there to be a flood of children into the foster care system,” Suarez said.

Illinois also has a “special immigrant juvenile status” that allows immigrant children who have suffered abuse, neglect or abandonment to gain permanent status in the U.S. if returning to their home country would not be in their best interests.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is prepared to care for children of parents facing deportation, according to agency spokesperson Heather Tarczan, and the agency is ramping up efforts to educate parents.

“As community members fear being separated from their families or children, DCFS and state agencies are closely coordinating with trusted community-based and legal organizations who have developed resources and trainings to educate people about their rights,” Tarczan wrote in an email.

The agency is also seeking to broaden services to immigrant families, including adding foster homes and recruiting frontline workers that are bilingual. Currently, Illinois has 430 non-relative foster homes, 294 of which are in Chicago. DCFS currently employs 65 bilingual frontline workers, such as caseworkers and investigators, for the entire state, according to Tarczan.

Conditional guardianships can help children avoid the trauma of foster care and keep siblings together. The process can also allow parents to retain their rights, remain in contact with their children and have some influence on their children’s upbringing.

“It would be disastrous for there to be a flood of children into the foster care system.”

—  attorney Marleen Suarez

One of the issues for parents facing deportation is they must name a guardian who has legal status in the U.S. In these kinds of tight-knit immigrant communities, Suarez said sometimes finding a suitable guardian is difficult.

In two cases, she found volunteers, both educators and vetted, to take children they have never met into their homes if their parents are deported.

“People are truly, truly frightened,” Suarez said.

From Jan. 23 to Jan. 31 Immigration and Customs Enforcement figures showed that more than 7,300 people were arrested and face deportation.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.