'You never think it will be you': NYC child welfare removals show racial bias, per report

Briana Hunt was picking up extra work at a hair salon in Washington, D.C., when she got a chilling phone call: Her 1-year-old daughter had nearly drowned in the bathtub in their Bronx apartment while under the care of the toddler’s dad.

Hunt rushed home in an Uber and arrived to find her child in a coma. Outside her daughter’s hospital room, another shock awaited Hunt: a representative from the city’s child welfare agency.

That night, Hunt’s three older children were taken away on allegations of neglect by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS — the agency responsible for investigating child abuse cases — even though Hunt wasn't there during the incident. Once her youngest recovered three months later and was discharged, she was also removed from Hunt’s custody.

Medical staff are required to report suspected cases of neglect or abuse. But Hunt says she was punished for an accident that happened when she was traveling for work and had arranged for other care. Hunt was separated from her children for a whole year until ACS withdrew its charges during trial — a rare move that generally happens when the agency can’t prove its case, attorneys said.

“ You just never think that it will be you one day,” said Hunt, who is now 27. “ Even though you know you've done nothing wrong, they can just come and just take your kids at any moment.”

Hunt’s story is among 21 featured in a new report by the Bronx Defenders, a public defender group. The organization said the stories demonstrate that ACS treats Black and Latino families more punitively than white parents, rushes to judge their parenting decisions and violates its own rules, sometimes separating children from their parents for days and weeks without getting required judicial approval.

ACS's own numbers show the agency is seven times more likely to investigate a Black family than a white one and six times more likely to investigate a Latino family than a white one. Additionally, the Bronx Defenders report says Black children are 13 times more likely to be put in foster care than white children, citing data from the NYC Family Policy Project, a child welfare think tank.

Like Hunt, most of the parents included in the report had their children removed from their custody and then eventually returned. In one case, a child was removed from a home after a parent, who was Black, left her child with a roommate to do laundry. The roommate then left the child alone and a neighbor called the police.

In another case in the report, a single mother took her son to the hospital after he burned himself with grease while she was cooking. ACS took her son for six months until a judge determined it was an accident that the mother had tried to prevent.

“All parents are in situations where they need support," said Anne Venhuizen, a supervising attorney for the Bronx Defenders. "All parents are in situations where they wish, looking back on it, they could have done something different. All parents are in situations where they did nothing wrong. All parents are in situations where someone criticizes their parenting, where they're like, this is the parenting I want to do, that I think is best for me and my family."

“Parenting is constant small and large decisions about what to do, what's best for your children, and it is inherently subjective," she added. "White parents get a grace that in this city, Black parents don't.”

A spokesperson for ACS didn’t comment on specific cases but referenced reforms the agency has launched in recent years to address ongoing racial disparities.

“By promoting supportive services that better stabilize families and focusing our child protective teams where children may be in danger, we work to reduce both the racial disparities within the child welfare system and the number of families unnecessarily impacted by the child welfare system,” spokesperson Marisa Kaufman said in a statement. “We will always continue to listen, learn and evolve our critical work to keep safe and uplift New York’s children.”

ACS is required to respond to reports of child abuse or neglect that the agency receives from the state. But city officials are encouraging people to call a city support line at 212-676-7667 when there isn’t suspicion of abuse or maltreatment and families just need resources like public assistance or food.

The city is also working to help parents get help before any investigation starts through school partnerships and are diverting more cases that don’t involve abuse to specially trained workers who help families get the support they need.

‘Just want my girls home’

T.R., who only wanted to be identified by her initials because she fears reprisal from ACS, said the city separated her from her two daughters in 2023.

She said her case, which is featured in the Bronx Defenders report, started as an anonymous call. According to the report, an ACS worker told her that someone alleged her oldest daughter, who was 17 years old at the time, was in an abusive relationship and her parents weren’t doing anything about it. When ACS came to investigate, T.R. said they couldn’t substantiate that claim and turned the focus on the cleanliness of her home.

T.R. took notes on her interactions with ACS, which Gothamist reviewed. T.R. said, and wrote in her notes, that the ACS representative told her she “had a lot of stuff” that could be a fire hazard and she needed to clean it while her youngest daughter stayed elsewhere.

“I couldn't understand that,” T.R. said. “You don't need to remove your kids out of your house to clean.”

T.R. said she agreed to let her youngest stay with an aunt in an apartment a few floors down where her oldest daughter was also spending the summer. She said she was scared because it was her first time dealing with ACS and she wanted to do everything to comply.

But what T.R. thought would be a few days turned into three months apart, including Thanksgiving. The report said ACS asked her to hire professional cleaners, rent a storage unit and take a drug test — all things she did to get her daughter back.

”I felt like they ripped my family away, even though I fought, I was fighting every night to get them back,” T.R. said.

“It was like [my children] weren’t safe because they're not with me. I can't watch them. I can't see them," she added. "Going to sleep, knowing they're not there and waking up, not seeing them, there were a lot of sleepless, a lot of crying nights."

The Bronx Defenders said T.R.'s case shows how ACS often breaks its own rules. They said ACS didn’t file T.R.’s case with a judge to get approval for a removal. ACS can only remove a child from a home once the agency gets permission from a family court judge to do so, though it can remove a child in an emergency situation if there is imminent harm.

A week after the Bronx Defenders intervened, ACS returned the kids right before Christmas. When the organization asked ACS in an email reviewed by Gothamist when T.R. could reunite with her children, the agency called the case an “arrangement," not a removal.

‘My heart is breaking’

The report said Hunt’s case in 2021 shows how ACS takes overly harsh measures against Black and Latino parents and rushes to judgement, disbelieving their explanations.

The petition that ACS filed with the court and that Gothamist reviewed alleged Hunt failed to provide adequate supervision and guardianship because her children were in diapers — including her oldest, who was then 6 years old — and were nonverbal. The petition also said Hunt’s behavior was “erratic, crying and no [sic] understanding to the needs of her children.”

“ I had a child who is barely breathing. A machine is breathing for her at the age of 1," Hunt said. "I couldn't, I'm not supposed to cry? My heart is breaking."

Hunt said her oldest daughter has autism and at the time was wearing pull-ups to bed because she couldn’t always rush to the toilet to make it on time. And she said her children were likely too scared to speak to an ACS case worker.

Records in the case show Hunt took her children to school, picked them up and helped them with their homework. She also spent the holidays with them while they were in foster care.

Hunt also had to take a parenting class and go to therapy — all while helping her youngest daughter recover, finishing school, working two jobs and commuting from the Bronx to see her kids in Far Rockaway.

“ I don't know what would make [ACS] think that a whole year of kids being away from their parent, it would make anybody better,” she said. “ My kids are my world.”

Hunt’s youngest daughter has since recovered from her near drowning. But Hunt said her children still get anxious when she leaves the house, wondering when she’s going to come home.

“There's a whole segment of parents in this city who have no idea, or very little idea … of what this system can do to a family and what they can be involved [with ACS] for. Everyone assumes well, it won't be for me,” Venhuizen from the Bronx Defenders said. “Black and Latino parents don't have that luxury.”