Laws of Separation

As the immigration debate rages in the US, Indians affected by stringent laws have been separated from their little children, albeit in a different way.

- Mandira Nayar

ASHVID WAS JUST two months old when he was taken away from his parents. His parents, Ashish and Videsha Pareek, had just arrived in the US. Ashish had a job with TCS, and the couple was still trying to figure out life in the new country and were grappling with the challenges of being new parents. A few days before Christmas, Ashvid slipped out of Videsha’s arms and hit his head on a table. As he lay in the intensive care unit, suffering from seizures, the Pareeks were branded unfit parents by the US government. Ashvid was taken away by Child Protective Services, a government agency responsible for tackling child maltreatment, to be placed in foster care.

“They thought that I had thrown the baby out of the window,’’ said Videsha, who had to defend herself legally to prove that she loved her baby. A team of detectives visited their house for a forensic examination of the table. “We tried to explain that I had spent years trying to conceive. Ashvid was the result of infertility treatment,” she said. “Why would I hurt my baby?’’

The legal battle went on for seven months, and Ashvid spent the time in foster care. Even the papers to put him up for adoption were drawn up. “We were in the hospital with Ashvid when they asked us to leave. We used to travel an hour every day just to stand outside the hospital, hoping that they would let us see him. They didn’t. We would spend all night calling the hospital to ensure that the nurses gave him his anti-seizure medicines,’’ said Videsha.

This was 2015, and Barack Obama was president. Donald Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric were nowhere in picture. Yet, it was not an isolated case. Suranya Aiyar, a lawyer who has studied the issue extensively, has documented 12 such cases. A majority of them involved newborns or toddlers of Indian IT professionals, who were new to the US.