Lawsuit Filed Against Mississippi Baby Theft

Two days after Baltazar Cruz gave birth to a baby girl in a Mississippi hospital, her newborn was snatched away and kept from her arms for a year. Why? A hospital worker made false accusations about her in order to facilitate the baby theft, but the primary reason seems to have actually been the fact that Cruz didn't speak English. Since she hailed from Mexico, she was provided with a Spanish interpreter, which did little good because she spoke an indigenous language. And even though a cousin showed up offering to translate for her, hospital officials refused to give her the chance to properly defend herself.

Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit against the Mississippi hospital and officials for conspiring in this baby theft, the creation of false allegations, and prolonging the separation even after the slander had been refuted. When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's (HHS) Office for Civil Rights and Administration for Children and Families investigated the matter, they found that reasonable steps were not taken to prevent tearing the family apart or to place the baby with relatives (she was almost immediately given to a white couple). Ironically, this lawsuit comes at the same time that Republicans are talking about stripping away birthright citizenship, claiming that children born to non-citizen parents, like Cruz, are not American and shouldn't have the right to live here.

Mississippi officials attempted to argue that Cruz's lack of English ability put the baby in danger, although she had been supporting herself by working in a Chinese restaurant, and the only danger to her and the baby seemed to come from state officials bent on ignoring and attacking her. There were also large cultural assumptions made, with Cruz deemed an unfit mother for not purchasing baby formula or a cradle, even though most people from her home breastfeed and carry the child in a special sling. Given that breastfeeding is, you know, good for the baby, this seems like an ill-founded complaint and a scrambling attempt to find rationale for the theft beyond anti-immigrant sentiment, pure and simple.

As Time magazine points out, this isn't the first time that indigenous mothers have been discriminated against and had their babies snatched away due to the language they speak. Often, the motivation seems rooted in some Western, nativist sense that Americans can raise their babies better, so immigrant mothers should just suck it up and let their kids go.

The HHS investigation of Cruz's also found that the Mississippi Department of Human Services just couldn't see any problem with what occurred. HHS stated: "This leads us to conclude that this may be how business is conducted and that this is not an isolated incident." Does that mean there has been repeated state-sanctioned baby-snatching in Mississippi? Shudder.

Photo credit: torres21