Two parents and their children sued the Administration for Children Services in a federal class action lawsuit Thursday, alleging the agency “abused” its emergency powers to separate them without approval from family court.
State law generally allows emergency removals in situations where the time spent seeking removal orders from a judge would endanger a child. But the lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges the agency has adopted an unwritten policy to routinely remove children on their own accord, even when the circumstances do not meet that legal standard.
“These seizures — which predominantly and disproportionally target the City’s Black and Latino families — frequently occur in the middle of the night, involve armed police officers, and result in ACS caseworkers pulling terrified children out of their beds,” the petition reads. “No family forgets the moment it is torn apart.”
ACS removes roughly 1,400 children under emergency circumstances every year, according to agency data. In 33% of emergency removal cases last year, family court judges did not find sufficient cause for a child to remain in the state’s custody in an initial hearing after the removal.
Overall, roughly 50% of ACS’s removals are done without court orders every year. Of those emergency removals, about 90% of cases involve Black or Latino children.
This, advocates say, violates parents’ and children’s constitutional rights to be protected against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as Black and Latino families’ right to equal protection under the 14th amendment.
“There is commonality to the brutality,” said Melissa Friedman, an attorney in charge at Legal Aid Society, which is representing the children in the case. “The reality is that ACS is acting without regard to what would actually minimize harm.”
Lasting Consequences
Among the lawsuit’s plaintiffs is Danielle Lorimer, a 37-year-old Bronx mother of five, who is Black and Latina. Her children’s school reported her for neglect when they said her 10- and five-year old girls showed up late, in poorly fitted clothes and in poor hygiene, according to the lawsuit. (All plaintiffs filed the suit under pseudonyms and declined to be interviewed.)
During ACS’ investigation, Lorimer explained she frequently stays with the children’s godmother to avoid unwanted visits from her ex-partner, who had violently assaulted her. Her ACS caseworker threatened to separate her from her children if they did not enter a homeless shelter, according to the lawsuit. When she relented, and appeared in family court virtually while at a Bronx shelter intake center, ACS said it would not seek a removal order against the family.
She was separated from her children under the emergency removal policy an hour and a half later anyway.
An ACS caseworker surrounded by multiple armed police led the mother and her children from a bus outside the intake center into a small, windowless room. The caseworker then told her she’d remove her sons and daughters to the Children’s Center. Confused and overwhelmed, Lorimer began to cry, pleading with ACS not to take her children away.
Zoe, Lorimer’s 14-year-old daughter, described the Children’s Center as a prison. Staff there confiscated her sketchbook of cherished drawings, and the next day, ACS forgot to pick her up from school, according to the lawsuit.
“Ms. Lorimer was not permitted to pick up her daughter. She told Zoe to be strong so they could be reunited soon,” the petition continued. “Ms. Lorimer was devastated that ACS was preventing her from caring for her distressed daughter.”
ACS eventually agreed to return the children three days later. But six months later, Lorimer and her children “still feel the harmful effects” of what had happened that day.
“Since the emergency removal, all five children suffer from severe anxiety whenever they are separated from their mother — including when they go to school — fearful that they will be separated again,” the petition wrote. “ACS never returned Zoe’s art book. Zoe is devastated by this loss.”
In a statement in response to the lawsuit, ACS spokesperson Marisa Kaufman said the agency is “committed to keeping families together whenever that is safely possible.”
“Emergency removals are only considered in circumstances where all other options are ruled out, and teams of highly trained child protective staff determine that a child is in imminent danger and that there is not enough time to get a court order,” Kaufman added. “In more than 97% of child protection cases, children are not removed from their homes.”
Nonetheless, numerous studies have shown the enduring emotional toll for families that are separated. Friedman cites one 2005 study which shows foster children are almost twice as likely to live with PTSD as war veterans.
Denise Archer’s children, for example, have “developed lasting psychological and behavioral problems” three years after their emergency separation. Archer herself had developed depression and anxiety after spending three years in foster care as a teenager, and was “destabilized by ACS’s sudden and terrifying removal of her children,” according to the lawsuit.
ACS began to investigate the 36-year-old Black mother of three in 2023 when her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, who lives with autism and ADHD, got injured during a meltdown. ACS conducted an emergency removal although the doctor who had reported the incident noted how Archer and Jasmine’s explanation was consistent with the injury.
The agency closed the case and reunited the family weeks later — only to re-open another investigation that led to a three-year separation another few weeks later, after Archer called a state hotline hoping to resume respite care for her 12-year-old daughter after it was suspended during the COVID pandemic.
At a home visit during the investigation, a caseworker discovered Archer’s six-year-old son had accidentally burned his arm while she was ironing. The caseworker brought him to the hospital for further evaluation, but instead of reuniting the two after his hospital discharge, ACS sought to separate Archer from her three children under the emergency removal policy, according to the petition.
The children cycled through multiple foster homes in the nearly three years that they were separated from their mother, struggling to adjust, according to the lawsuit. Jasmine, in particular, was punched in the face by another foster placement resident, then involuntarily hospitalized and forcibly medicated by her foster parents approximately 10 times, the suit alleges.
“According to Jasmine, ACS made her ‘want to die,’” the petition noted. “The two younger boys also suffered emotional harm in ACS’s care.”
With a new commissioner now in place, Friedman hopes ACS will employ emergency removals more sparingly while strengthening training around the practice and around racial bias.
“The point of our lawsuit is not that there should never be an emergency removal,” she said. “But it is so important to understand the harm and trauma of removal, so that if there does have to be a removal, it should be done through court so it can be done more orderly.”
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