A Florida foster family who say they've been raising a baby since he was a week old is upset over a judge's decision to deport the 10-month-old to Haiti, WSVN reports.
The parents, identified by news outlets as Tamara and Gerald, said they originally planned not to adopt the child, who is named Angel, but that changed when they discovered the child would be deported.
“We are up against the government, basically,” said Gerald. “We’re David, they’re Goliath.”
“We’re just regular people. I am a United States veteran,” said Tamara. “I have served my country my entire freaking life, between being a veteran and being a court reporter with the legal system, and now years of taking in foster children.”
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“These are our children. This is our legacy,” said Tamara, who along with Gerald has fostered 10 children over the years.
According to WSVN, the baby's mother's parental rights were terminated and his father doesn't want him. But in August, Broward Circuit Court Judge Jose Izquierdo ruled Angel should be with his maternal grandmother in Haiti.
“They want to take an American citizen child and strip him of his rights and dump him in a third world country that is at war with itself,” said Tamara, referring to the embattled nation that is currently wracked by chaos and gangs.
Angel has a heart condition, and his grandmother lives in in a remote area.
“There’s no plumbing in the home. There’s no water in the home. There’s no electricity in the home,” said Tamara.
“They are dumping the kid into an active volcano,” Dr. Jim Wilentz, a U.S.-based cardiologist who cares for children in Haiti, told the Miami Herald. “I do not understand the urgency of sending a child to Haiti at a time of essentially deep deconstruction of the Haitian state, including healthcare.”