I’ve done a lot of searching online, and all I can seem to find is speculation and opinions.
In summary:
Mother and 17-year-old daughter have argument. Daughter packs things and leaves. Mother tells daughter not to return. Daughter now wants to reconcile and return.
(Naturally, I could turn this into a soap-opera style story with details as well as my own opinions on the matter, but this is GQ and I’m looking for a factual answer.)
Other possibly pertinent details: Mother is unmarried. Father lives overseas (has never been to U.S.), and hasn’t seen daughter in person in ten years. Daughter won’t be 18 for another 8 months. Mother and daughter are both in the U.S. illegally on long-expired tourist visas.
This is in the state of Massachusetts.
What are the possible legal ramifications for both parties? Is the mother legally obligated to provide food and shelter until the daughter turns 18?
The only ramifications I’m seeing here are if either of them approach the police or the court system to get their grievance settled “legally,” there’s a fair to decent chance that ICE will deport them both back to where they came from.
If they were legal citizens, there are all sorts of applicable laws and statutes, usually varying by state, but as illegals, attempting to plead that those laws aren’t being enforced wouldn’t go well for either mom or the child. At best, mom would be simply deported and child possibly allowed to stay on and have her case pled. Slightly worse case, mom is in jail for child abuse (to be deported once she gets out) and kid gets immediately deported to her dad.
When the ultimate legal consequence is “both are deported” there’s really not much point in considering any other legal issues. Some states have requirements for support.
California, for example, I have heard you cannot evict a child under 18. In Ontario (Canada), there was a kerfuffle a decade or two ago because a minor child could go to welfare, ask for a separate place, and the parents would be dinged for the cost of support but could not force the child to return home. In one case, a 16-yo was found to be working as a stripper while her parents who could not control her at home had to pay for her private apartment.
Well, the Fourteenth Amendment does say no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The courts have long held that this applies to illegal aliens. So the kid could take mom to court, but I’m not sure what the she could hope to gain from it and they would be opening themselves up to being deported as well.
And since it’s Mass., I would hope it’s less likely you’ll get a crackpot judge claiming that illegal aliens aren’t within the jurisdiction of the laws. The federales, though, whoo boy. Is your district or city a “safe haven”? That might help, in that they might just cross their fingers & not report the case to I.C.E.
There’s a normal answer, and an answer informed by the present ascendancy of nationalists in the federal government.
Surely a parent/guardian with a minor child who refused to give shelter to that child (when they had the means to do so, and when the child had no other parent/guardian they could practically go to) would be guilty of neglect. I am fairly confident that is illegal throughout the United States. (The parties’ immigrant status a red herring to the main question here.)
Technically, you can. However, the child then goes into foster care, and the state bills you for the cost. My parents and I dealt with this when taking care of a former student of mine. Her step-father was extremely unhappy to find out about this consequence. He relented and told her she could come home, but by then, she was in the system, and getting regular meals, clothes, shoes, reliable transportation by bus, and not being told she was a slut, was appealing enough that she stayed in the system another year.