They stayed in foster care for almost three years. The first set of foster parents found Jasmine too difficult to handle, so she was sent to another home without her brothers, then to a third home, and then a fourth. The various parents found her so troublesome that they repeatedly called 911. She was forcibly medicated; on about ten occasions, she was sent to psychiatric wards, something that had never happened when she lived with her family. Her mother was not allowed to visit her in the hospital. Finally, earlier this spring, the case reached an appellate court, which noted that Archer had, in fact, been in treatment for her depression and anxiety, and that, anyway, there was no evidence her mental health had posed a danger to her kids, effectively insuring that the children would be immediately returned to their mother.
The three years of separation and foster care will leave a permanent mark on the family. Daevon, who is five, fearfully apologizes to his mother if he does something wrong. He was two when he went into care, and, when he first got home, he would sometimes cry for his foster mother. At first, Archer allowed him to speak with his foster mother on the phone, but then his school told her that she should cut that off because it was too confusing. Jasmine withdraws much of the time. While she was away, she once threatened to hurt herself and said that she wished she were dead. She blames herself for things that happened to her in care. When Jeremiah, the middle child, who is seven, was in his foster home, he started pulling out his eyebrow hairs and wetting the bed. He now tells his mom that she is not a bad mother.
The second lead plaintiff is Danielle Lorimer, a thirty-seven-year-old Black and Latina woman who lives in the Bronx with her five children. (Again, all names are pseudonyms.) Lorimer lived with her parents until she was twelve, when they split up. She started college, but left after she got pregnant; she had her baby, a girl, Zoe, in 2011. Sometimes she found work—she had a job at TJ Maxx for a while, then a gig as a security guard—and sometimes she was on welfare. She went back to school to get certified as a medical assistant. In 2015, she had a second daughter, Yolanda, and, in 2018, a third, Xena.
After she had Xena, she fell into a deep postpartum depression. She and the girls were staying in a single room in a hotel turned into a shelter. By then, Zoe was in school, and Lorimer spent most of her time in the room alone with Yolanda and the baby. Her mother was living in North Carolina; she felt that her father, who still lived in New York, saw her only when convenient.
Near the end of the year, she received a visit from an A.C.S. caseworker. Someone, possibly from the shelter, had called the state hotline. Later, in court, A.C.S. told a judge that it was concerned about her mental health. It said that the floor of her room was covered in garbage, dirty clothes, and leftover food, and that the sink was full of dirty dishes. A.C.S. didn’t ask to remove the kids, but it wanted her to accept mental-health services, which she agreed to do. During the next few months, the caseworker visited a few more times. In April, Lorimer bought decorations to celebrate Xena’s first birthday.
A few days later, she was in her room with Yolanda and Xena when the caseworker turned up with a colleague. The caseworker told her to come by herself to the shelter office; the colleague would watch the kids. In the office, she was told that A.C.S. was doing an emergency removal. The colleague had already left with Yolanda and Xena; A.C.S. would pick up Zoe at school. She could not say goodbye. The caseworker asked if she knew someone who could put them up—if not, they would go into foster care. Panicked, she called her father, and he agreed to take them in.
