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An 8-year old American citizen has been removed from the New Bedford home of her foster parents and is being forced to move to Guatemala with her biological father — though she has never lived with him, nor does she speak Spanish.
Attorneys filed an emergency motion in U.S. District Court Massachusetts Monday to stay the move — days after a federal judge cleared the way for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families to send the child, identified only as S.R.C., to Guatemala in compliance with a Massachusetts Juvenile Court decision granting custody to her biological father.
A spokesperson for the Department of Children and Families said that custody decisions are made by juvenile courts and do not fall within the purview of the agency. The Juvenile Court judge’s custody decision was issued on Sept. 8, 2025.
Lawyers for the child and her foster parents, John Cobbett-Walden and Catherine Cobbett-Walden, filed an appeal with the U.S. District Court immediately after Judge Angel Kelley dismissed the case Friday.
Kirsten Zwicker, a family attorney who represented the Cobbett-Waldens in the case, said the move to Guatemala was not in the child’s best interest and amounted, effectively, to the exile of a U.S. citizen. The Cobbett-Waldens deferred all inquiries to Zwicker.
“What we were focused on was this state action by a state agency seeking the expulsion of a U.S. citizen,” she said. “The expulsion of a U.S. citizen lies in the lane of federal court.”
DCF declined to speak on the specifics of the case.
“Due to state and federal privacy requirements, the Department cannot provide information about specific cases,” a DCF spokesperson said in an email to The Light.
Kelley, the federal judge, agreed with arguments by the state and lawyers for the child’s father, Esvin O. Gregorio Cabrera, that the federal court did not have jurisdiction over custodial matters.
“The Juvenile Court judge also ordered that S.R.C. have two months of medications “to travel with [her] to Guatemala” and that S.R.C.’s medical, educational, and custody records be translated to Spanish and “accompany [her] to Guatemala,” Kelley wrote in her decision. “The request to stop S.R.C.’s transfer is directly in conflict with these sections of the Juvenile Court judge’s order.”
Zwicker said that though the ruling made sense on those grounds, that was not her argument during the proceedings. She instead argued that state authorities deprived S.R.C. of the protections of U.S. citizenship and the due process and equal protections clause of the Constitution.
DCF policy prioritizes family reunification in cases where it intervenes, but Zwicker argued that the word is a misnomer given the circumstances.
“This child has never been in his custody,” she said. “They keep using the word ‘reunited,’ but we push back on that.”
Cabrera’s attorneys did not respond to an email requesting comment.
‘I don’t understand’
The move has some advocates claiming hypocrisy on the part of Gov. Maura Healey, since she has opposed much of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
“As you well know, a significant majority of people detained by ICE in Massachusetts over the past year have no criminal conviction,” Healey wrote in a December letter to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons calling for the end of deportation flights from Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford. “They are hardworking, productive, and beloved members of our community that you have indiscriminately targeted for deportation proceedings.
“This doesn’t make us safer,” she added. “This makes us less safe.”
On Jan. 24, Healey issued a statement condemning the killing of Alex Pretti by ICE agents in a Minneapolis street during ongoing protests against the mass deportation campaign and the agency’s violent tactics.
“These rogue federal agents do not belong in our streets,” she said. “ICE is not just making us less safe — they’re a threat to the safety and well-being of Americans.”
Larry Tobin, director of the Shapiro Center, a nonprofit that works with refugees and displaced people, said the gap between Healey’s professed ideals and the circumstances of this case were noticeable. He added that he was commenting as a private citizen, not as head of the center.
“When I hear Governor Healey’s comments, I hear a woman and leader who genuinely cares about the sanctity of human life,” he said. “She’s commenting on the tragic loss of life in another state because she deeply cares.
“I don’t understand how a leader who sees all the issues she sees happening on the streets of Minneapolis [can] be comfortable with a state agency effectively deporting an 8-year-old little girl,” he continued. “And I say that as the father of three young children.”
A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, under whose auspices DCF falls, said deportation is not within the power of state authorities.
History
According to the foster parents’ initial complaint, S.R.C. was born in Massachusetts on May 3, 2017, to Esvin O. Gregorio Cabrera, then 29, and her mother, then 15. The age of consent in Massachusetts is 16, but there was no prosecution based on any allegation of statutory rape against Cabrera, according to the complaint.
The complaint asserts that federal authorities deported Cabrera to Guatemala due to the expiration of his work permit shortly before his daughter’s birth. It also states that between then and 2021, Cabrera faced drunk driving charges in Guatemala after colliding with a police vehicle.
The complaint said S.R.C.’s biological mother never attempted to contact the child after DCF removed her from her care on May 2, 2021. Authorities terminated her parental rights in June 2024.
The child exhibited behavioral issues with two different foster families before DCF placed her with the Cobbett-Waldens in February 2022, according to the complaint. That same month, DCF allowed Cabrera, who had returned to the U.S. without authorization the previous year, to have supervised visits with S.R.C. The complaint said her behavior “repeatedly regressed” after visits with her biological father and one such visit in November 2022 prompted her to hit her foster mother and run away. Since then, multiple physicians have diagnosed the child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and reactive attachment disorder.
The couple enrolled the child at Casimir Pulaski Elementary School where she studied under an individual education plan.
“The Child has a history of emotional and behavioral challenges that include but are not limited to punching, pinching, spitting, kicking, throwing toys, biting, pouring liquid in inappropriate places, running from the home, and stabbing her Foster Parents with sharp objects,” the foster parents’ complaint said. “Although the Child sometimes exhibits behaviors consistent with a history of trauma and disrupted attachment, the Foster Parents have taken a gentle parenting approach that both embraces the Child’s independence while also ensuring her safety and well-being. The Child has thrived in their care for the past three years.”
A DCF social worker recommended the child not be enrolled in the 2025-2026 school year at Pulaski, and her foster parents instead enrolled her at the Rashi School, a reform Jewish school in Dedham.
Between June 2024 and October 2024, Cabrera visited the child without supervision. The complaint said that the child had a violent tantrum when informed of the first unsupervised visits, refusing to go to school, becoming violent, refusing to sleep, and clinging to her foster parents for prolonged periods of time. The complaint also alleged that she expressly wanted to stay with the Cobbett-Waldens.
There were eight unsupervised visits. According to the foster parents’ complaint, Cabrera allegedly failed to feed her dinner during the first one, and during their only overnight visit he did not give her the medication necessary to manage her mental health.
The visits continued until ICE took Cabrera into custody in October 2024. The federal government deported him to Guatemala the following month.
After his deportation, Cabrera continued to speak with S.R.C. through Zoom calls, “which have all gone extremely poorly,” according to the complaint. Part of the issues stemmed from the language barrier, as S.R.C. only speaks English and Cabrera only Spanish, and the child refused to participate on multiple occasions.
“A DCF translator appears for the Zoom calls to translate, but each conversation lasts only a matter of moments,” the complaint said. “To characterize these calls as a building block for placement is a gross misrepresentation. There is no meaningful communication, no relationship, and no foundation for placement between Mr. Cabrera and the Child.”
Zwicker said the foster family also fears for the child’s well-being should she be sent to Guatemala, given that country’s medical system and economic situation.
Father defends self
A DCF social worker took the child to get a U.S. passport on Aug. 29, 2025, and on Sept. 17, after the Juvenile Court ruling, the same social worker told the Cobbett-Waldens that the child would be brought to Guatemala to live with Cabrera on Sept. 25, prompting their initial filing in U.S. District Court.
In a filing with the court on Oct. 31, Cabrera argued that S.R.C. should be transferred to his custody. His filing said he had been found suitable by the Juvenile Court, was consistent with visits, attended medical appointments, has completed parenting and English-language courses, has identified support for the child’s needs, and is financially stable with employment and housing. It also said S.R.C. had repeatedly expressed a desire to live with her father.
“Notably, Plaintiffs appear to concede that under the Juvenile Court’s decision awarding him custody, Father would have every right to bring Child to live with him in Guatemala if he had the ability to travel to the United States,” he argued. “But because Father lacks that ability, Plaintiffs seek to take unfair advantage of that fact by claiming that Child’s constitutional rights would somehow be violated if DCF were to facilitate Child’s travel to Guatemala, an act they characterize as ‘deportation’ or ‘exile.’”
DCF has a contract with International Social Service USA, a Baltimore-based international social work nonprofit, to conduct home studies abroad.
Tobin, of the Shapiro Center, said he wondered how accurately authorities were able to ascertain Cabrera’s situation.
“We live in a world where anybody can purport to live a certain lifestyle online; there’s no way for any agency to accurately do a home screen remotely,” he said, adding that he’s aware of one other case where a person abroad claimed a different address from their own as their home. “DCF has no idea what his actual living situation is in Guatemala.”
Zwicker said the Cobbett-Waldens will contest the case until the end and have created an online fundraiser that has reached $27,948 of its $50,000 fundraising goal to cover legal costs.
“They are heartbroken by this,” Zwicker said. “They are very frightened at the prospect of her being in a foreign country with a foreign language where she will have no one she is familiar with nearby.”
Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org
