by Heather Bergen, MA & Salina Abji, PhD
We want to begin this article with a story. This is the story of Abdoul and Fatouma Abdi, two Somali kids who moved to Canada as refugees with their aunts and were taken in by the child protection system (CPS) and then criminalized by it (Bergen & Abji, 2020). Although this happened in Canada, we believe the trajectory of this story will be familiar to Americans. While this is a story about a specific family, we know lots of other young people with similar stories. We share this story to help ground our discussion in the concrete ways that kids are transformed from young refugees needing protection into “deportable criminal aliens” and what we can do to stop this process.
Abdoul and Fatouma’s mom died in a refugee camp. Luckily, they had two aunts who took them in and eventually they came as a family to Canada. Life in Canada was different; they didn’t speak English, and Abdoul and Fatouma experienced a lot of racist bullying in school. Their aunts knew that their most important job was to keep the kids safe and so they pulled them out of the school but didn’t know how to enroll them in another school, so they kept them at home.
Child protection was notified that they were no longer attending school and did an investigation for educational neglect and took Abdoul and Fatouma from their aunts and put them in foster care. At first together, but eventually the siblings were separated when they reported abuse in a foster home. Fatouma was removed from the foster home, but Abdoul was left there for another two years. After he was finally taken out of the abusive foster home, he bounced around 31 foster homes before he came into contact with the police and was imprisoned. During this time, the aunts formalized their immigration status, becoming citizens, and tried to apply for citizenship for Abdoul and Fatouma as well but they were not able to since they were no longer their guardians.
At this time there were no child protection policies for identifying or applying for citizenship for youth in care and so no efforts were made. The moment that Abdoul was released from prison he was detained by the Canadian equivalent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States. Fatouma shared their story at a townhall with the prime minister and it caught the media’s attention. How could someone whose “guardians”, CPS, were the Canadian government, not be considered Canadian and be at risk of deportation? This story departs from the norm because of the amazing advocacy by Abdoul, his sister, and a coalition of advocacy groups who worked relentlessly and were able to stabilize his immigration status and prevent his deportation (Jones, 2022).
Abdoul’s story was framed in the media as an exceptional one and yet we know that the path of young people from foster care to the criminal legal system, sometimes called “crossover youth,” is a common one, particularly for Black, Indigenous and racialized young men (Edwards et al., 2023). For youth without citizenship, the implications extend beyond criminalization to deportation, often from the only home they have ever known. The trajectory from innocent child refugee to “dangerous alien criminal” is a common one and deeply shaped by carceral ideas of who is allowed to be part of society (Copeland & Dettlaff, 2024; S. L. Washington, 2023).
Carceral framings are taught from early childhood: the idea that punishment and control are the best way to respond when someone makes a mistake, breaks a rule, or causes harm, rather than approaches that encourage learning from mistakes, taking accountability, and repairing harm. Carceral approaches do not solve the root problems, nor do they help people change, yet such approaches are deeply ingrained in our society and these early lessons shape how we see the world. In Abdoul’s case, ideologies such as anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, sexism and xenophobia transformed loving aunts, protecting children from bullying, which the school system chose not to address, into neglectful, abusive guardians. Teachers and administrators did not believe Fatouma and Abdoul, or did not see them as needing protection from bullying, and instead reported the family to CPS.
Then, rather than investigating and helping the family advocate in their school, or helping them to enroll in another school, CPS saw guardians who were “uncaring” and “unfit” and decided to “rescue” these children by taking them into foster care. Once in care, these children who had already lived through so much trauma in their young lives, were abused in foster care, separated from each other, and bounced from foster home to foster home with no attention paid to their immigration status, despite their aunts trying to advocate for them. As Abdoul aged from a child to a young Black man he was criminalized: anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and sexism transformed him into a “dangerous threat” with the only solution being punishment. His refugee status was also criminalized as proof that he did not, and could never, belong; he was not truly Canadian.
We share this story because it illustrates places where professionals in social and child welfare work can change practice to do better in concrete and necessary ways. Ideally in ways that will improve things for youth currently in the system and also grounded in transformative justice, that will help take a more expansive vision of what justice would look like for young people like Abdoul and Fatouma.
Implications for Social Work Practice:
If youth are in care, CPS has a responsibility to know their immigration status and to work toward gaining citizenship as they become eligible.
Part of a caregiver’s duty is to help children in their care gain access to what they are entitled to and immigration status is an integral part of that; access to jobs, healthcare, and postsecondary education is much more difficult or expensive for non-citizens (Mucina & Lash-Ballew, 2024). Knowing that youth in care are particularly at risk of criminalization and thus deportation if they are not citizens, there is an even more urgent responsibility for CPS workers to identify and stabilize young people’s immigration status. CPS workers don’t need to do immigration advocacy themselves, they simply must identify immigration status when it is an issue and have good referrals to immigration professionals.
Professionals in social and child welfare work have a responsibility to consider and change their role in involving police unnecessarily in the lives of youth in care.
This involves examining a number of “standard practices” such as making a report to the police when a young person disappears from a foster or group home (D. M. Washington et al., 2025). While asking the police for help seems like the only option and uncontroversial, it’s important to consider the ways that police looking for young people may lead to criminalization. Additionally, if siblings squabble and one throws the remote control at another it would be a regular day for many families, but for those in foster care this can lead to a police call and being charged for “assault with a weapon”. When police involvement is part of standard procedure, or disciplinary consequences, then we need to consider how this impacts youth, especially Black, Indigenous and racialized young men, who are already stereotyped as “dangerous”.
Balancing the Duty to Report with the Duty to Support.
The “Duty to Support” is a term coined by Joyce MacMillan, a Black parent advocate in New York City, that highlights that many reports to CPS are about families that need supports rather than CPS intervention (JMAC for Families, n.d.). An important piece to consider is that from what is available in the public record this was a family that needed support and advocacy. Mandated reporting legislation is broad and reporters are trained to interpret it even more broadly (Pappas et al., 2025). In the U.S., the majority of families are reported for “neglect”, which is often more accurately described as poverty, even just an investigation can have devastating impacts for families and this is especially true for families that are part of communities over-represented in CPS (Fong, 2023; Merritt et al., 2025). Reporting professionals can play an important role by providing support to families, such as Abdoul and Fatouma’s, rather than reporting to an already overburdened child protection system.
Dreaming and Building Futures Free from Structural and Individual Violence.
Part of the success of Abdoul and Fatouma in getting and maintaining national attention for Abdoul’s situation was the creative and brave advocacy by Abdoul and Fatouma, activist groups such as Black Lives Matter, No One is Illegal, as well as activist lawyers, scholars, and social workers (Jones, 2022). For communities impacted by interlocking systems such as CPS, immigration and the criminal legal system, it is easier to see these intersections and social and child welfare professionals have an important responsibility to consider how to use their skills to support the amazing community work being done. Social work can be siloed and disconnected but we have a responsibility to think holistically and support the work being done by communities. From providing free meeting spaces, photocopying, signing support letters, testifying about impacts to politicians, there are many ways to support and amplify the work already being done.
As we argue in our longer research article on Abdoul’s story, imagining a world without prisons, immigration detention and the child protection system stretches the limits of our collective imagination. Yet, the skills of facilitating and holding space for people to heal, learn and grow together are ones that social and child welfare work can offer. Abdoul’s trajectory through systems, as well as the ongoing resistance, provide important lessons for social and child welfare workers committed to creating a world free from violence (Bergen & Abji, 2020).
Heather Bergen is a PhD candidate in Social Work at York University. Her research examines how mandated reporters understand and practice the duty to report child maltreatment.
Salina Abji, PhD, is a Sociologist and Research Consultant. Her research examines the politics of citizenship and migration, gender-based violence, and social justice activism.