THEIR GATHERINGS WERE like something you’d expect after war, or genocide. Halting voices. Silences. The hush of a confessional. But these weren’t soldiers—they were social workers.
They spoke from their homes via the dispassionate confines of a Zoom conference. One woman talked softly about “apprehending” a 2-day-old baby, and recalled crying when she was praised for doing her job. Another described being sent out to take children from good parents who lived in shoddy housing. A third told how her colleagues would warn their own children, “If somebody has a badge like Mommy, don’t talk to them until I get there.”
Child protective services hold a contradiction at their core. Agencies have a mandate to protect children from serious harm at the hands of caretakers. But their most powerful tool is family separation, an act that itself can harm both children and parents, even when justified. Since 2020, a growing sentiment among experts that many such removals hurt more than help—and that they decimate communities of color—has brought this tension to the fore. Across the
