'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.