Because so many immigration benefits depend on familial relationships, severing the parent-child relationship has consequences for parents and children.
- Children: TPR can make a child permanently ineligible to derive citizenship from a parent.
- Parents: Disrupting the parent-child relationship may negatively impact a parent’s immigration applications, including applications for relief from deportation that require a showing of hardship to children.
Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA)
- N.Y. Social Services Law 384-b allows for an exception to the ASFA requirement that Child Protective Services file a TPR petition when a child has been in foster care for 15 out of the past 22 months if the parent has been held in immigration detention and maintains a meaningful role in their child’s life.
- Immigration detention does not provide the basis to deprive a family member from meaningful access to a family court proceeding.
