Delaware immigrant parents face uncertainty amid ongoing deportations

Why Should Delaware Care?
The Department of Homeland Security has planned a surge of immigrant detentions, leaving some parents living in Delaware with the uncertainty of where their American-born children will be placed should they be deported. If they choose to leave them here, they could enter an already strained foster care system.

For Julienne, a Haitian mother living in Seaford, fears about being deported are not centered around her own future, but that of her 6-year-old son, Junior. 

The mother of four has been living in Seaford since 2023, but anxiety about what would happen to her children if she gets deported has only grown stronger since her humanitarian parole program — which allowed her to legally live in the U.S. — ended last year.

“My main concern is the kids and what’s going to happen to them,” Julienne said in Haitian Creole. “I’m the mom, I have to take care of them.”

Junior is the only one of Julienne’s four children currently living in the U.S. He holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Haiti, but Julienne said she does not want Junior to return to her home country.

The Caribbean island country, which has been wracked by gang violence, civil war and food scarcity for several years, is not a safe or prosperous place to raise a young child, she said. More than half of Haiti’s 12 million people are experiencing “acute food insecurity,” or the sudden lack of food that puts their lives at risk, according to the United Nations.

Julienne already worries about her other three older children who currently live on the island.

But should Julienne be deported, a fear that grows with the Trump administration’s renewed promises to increase immigration enforcement in states like Delaware, options for Junior’s care are slim. His father travels frequently for work, and Julienne’s family members in Seaford are already strapped with other caretaking responsibilities, she said.

She fears Junior would end up in the foster care system. And she is not alone. 

Immigration lawyers and experts working in Delaware’s foster care system said uncertainty and fear is on the rise among Delaware’s undocumented immigrants over what will happen to their U.S.-born children should they be deported. 

The answer, experts said, is complicated.

What happens to a child if their parent is deported? 

When a parent gets deported, there are two main options for the child’s future care, said Emily Houde, supervising attorney for Community Legal Aid Society Inc.’s (CLASI) immigration unit.

If children are present when Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains a parent, Houde said, ICE agents are supposed to coordinate with state officials for the children to be placed with a proper caregiver, whether that be a nearby relative or into the foster care system.

But many parents do not have anyone else who can take care of their children, Houde said,  opening the possibility of the state stepping in.

But ICE processes, however, are not foolproof. 

If no children are present when ICE detains a parent, agents do not necessarily have the duty to ask the person being detained if they have kids, Houde said.

That means the Department of Services for Children, Youth & Their Families (DSCYF), the Delaware agency responsible for administering foster care services, may not know a child has been left behind if no one reports or alerts the agency, Houde said.

Even after children of deported parents are under DSCYF’s care, the reunification process can be a long and arduous one. 

“It can be really complicated depending on the individual circumstances of these cases,” Houde said. “How long they’ve [been] separated, if they ever can get back [to the U.S.], or eventually, if the parent sends for them from abroad to join them.”

The situation is further complicated, one advocate said, by a lack of accurate data.

Maria Theresa Beauchamp Balan, co-founder of advocacy organization Network Delaware, said she is concerned Delaware does not adequately track children affected by immigration-related family separation or foster care placement.

Federal data showed a 49% increase in immigration enforcement-related foster care entries in 2025, but that number is likely an undercount.

How are foster care providers preparing?

​Sarah Azevedo, director of the Division of Family Services, the arm of DSCYF responsible for administering foster care services, said the agency does not ask legal status when providing services, nor does it report families to ICE. 

DSCYF’s main mission, she said, is to be able to give children a stable home.

Any child who is currently in foster care is under the custody of the state of Delaware, Azevedo added, and is therefore not at risk of being deported themselves.

DSCYF’s current main concerns are overcoming a shortage of foster parents and difficulties in placing children with high needs in homes with adequate support.

ChaTanya Lankford, executive director of multi-state foster care service provider Pressley Ridge, echoed these challenges. She said her organization has seen an influx of referrals for children from families impacted by immigration laws and changes.

Fear of the legal and immigration systems may discourage people in small or shrinking communities from identifying themselves as kinship caregivers, Lankford said, particularly if they fear becoming vulnerable themselves. 

In Delaware, Azevedo said it is DSCYF’s policy to look for caregivers that children may be familiar with before resorting to a foster home.

“It’s still a traumatic experience for a child to have to live with someone who is not their own family,” Azevedo said. 

Delaware has approximately 400 children in foster or kinship care placements as of this year, Azevedo said, a lower number than in many other jurisdictions across the United States.

How can immigrant parents prepare?

Houde, the CLASI attorney, said Delaware does not have a standby guardianship process that specifically allows parents to designate a caregiver in anticipation of immigration detention. 

Parents can instead establish a childcare power of attorney to authorize another adult to care for their children, she said.

Families can prepare a notarized document naming a trusted adult and providing information about the child, such as medications, allergies, school information and their Social Security number.

This type of document is temporary, Houde said, and it does not provide full legal authority. It may cover a short amount of time until the new caretaker goes to family court to file for legal guardianship of the child, which can offer the child a long-term solution.

Azevedo, from the Division of Family Services, similarly said she encourages families to create informal caretaking plans such as identifying specific relatives or friends to ensure children are not left alone if parents are detained.

With the concern of family separation remaining high, Houde said CLASI’s outreach focused on family preparedness for Hispanic and Haitian communities has increased.

In the meantime, Julienne’s future remains unclear. She said she tries not to let her fear for her son’s future overtake her daily life, but it has become a constant presence in her mind. 

“At this point, you don’t know the future,” Julienne said. “Anything can happen, and it’s very, very hard.”