Due to a lack of system-wide data, it's unclear how typical Bail's case is among undocumented immigrants, but historically, family separation through the child welfare system has disproportionately impacted poor children and children of color, especially in the Black and American Indian communities.

The common refrain of child welfare agencies is that removal is in the child's best interest. To activists and progressive social workers, the perception that poor people of color are somehow unfit as parents reveals institutionalized intolerance for cultures outside the mainstream family ideal. Washington University legal scholar Annette Ruth Appell wrote in the Nevada Law Review:

"we have in this country a long and continuing history of constructing the ideal of 'mother' according to skin color, religion, culture, national origin, language, ethnicity, class, and marital status. Families headed by mothers who do not meet these norms are most vulnerable to coercive state intervention and regulation through the child welfare system.... White, and middle class are most successful in the child welfare system; those who diverge from these norms are most likely to lose their motherhood."

Given that historical precedent, it's no surprise that an impoverished undocumented immigrant could be doubly punished by deportation and the loss of a child. And Carlos, now two years old, may be raised in a safe home, surrounded by the privileges of citizenship from which his birth mother was systematically excluded.

A 2006 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that immigrant families are extremely vulnerable in the intersection between child welfare and the ICE bureaucracy.

"There is a lack of training and technical assistance available to child welfare staff on immigrant issues... It is difficult to license relative caregivers since many relative caregivers have difficulties fulfilling foster care regulations, including minimum space per occupant requirements, fingerprint clearances without government-issued identification, and income qualifications. Given the shortage of licensed foster care homes, immigrant youth are rarely placed in linguistically and culturally matched foster homes."

Bail, at least, was allowed to avoid deportation as she worked through the family court process. An untold number of immigrant parents and children may never have a real opportunity to challenge a child welfare intervention or termination of parental rights. Human Rights Watch estimates that more than one million family members have been separated by deportation since 1997. As a perverse alternative, there have also been cases of children held along with their parents in isolated detention centers.

The relationship between parent and child is sacrosanct in any culture. But the immigration system respects boundaries over bonds: again and again, our laws sunder the one human connection for which parents risked everything when they crossed over to the wrong side of the border.

Image: Suzanne DeChillo / The New York Times