The Kentucky Supreme Court and state Attorney General Russell Coleman have formally entered a contentious legal dispute over the custody of a one-year-old child whose biological mother is currently held in federal immigration custody and slated for deportation to Guatemala.
The legal battle escalated after state appellate and high courts rejected urgent requests to prevent the infant, who has spent nearly her entire life in foster care, from being reunited with her mother prior to their scheduled departure from the United States.
In a late-night order issued at 10:43 p.m., the Kentucky Supreme Court voted 5-2 to deny an emergency request that sought to halt the reunification process. Although the high court refused to freeze the lower court's transfer directive, it agreed to review forthcoming legal briefs on the underlying merits of the dispute from all involved parties.
As part of its intervention, the state Supreme Court authorized Attorney General Russell Coleman to submit an amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court, brief supporting the foster parents. Coleman argued in his emergency filing that the impending transfer of the infant warrants a much more thorough examination before the child is removed from the country.
In his brief, Coleman maintained that Kentucky statutes generally anticipate an extensive reunification procedure before a child is returned to a biological parent. The attorney general argued that such a process is effectively impossible given the mother's imminent deportation, suggesting that the local family court bypassed customary protocols due to the impending federal removal.
Coleman acknowledged in his submission that he did not possess access to all underlying case documents, which remain strictly sealed under Kentucky confidentiality statutes governing child welfare and family court matters. While state law affords foster parents the right to be heard during hearings concerning children in their care, Coleman asserted that full legal intervention should have been permitted under the rare circumstances of this proceeding.
The high court's late-night determination arrived shortly after Kentucky Court of Appeals Judge Sara Walter Combs declined a parallel emergency bid filed by the foster caregivers. The foster parents had sought formal standing to intervene, contending they had been denied meaningful input regarding the fate of the infant they had nurtured since shortly after her birth.
Judge Combs denied the foster parents' emergency motion and referred the broader matter to a three-judge appellate panel for eventual review. In her written order, Combs also turned down Coleman’s petition to participate at the appellate level, ruling that the state’s legal interests were already properly and competently represented by both the Jefferson County Attorney and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, the state agency holding legal custody of the girl.
Combs emphasized in her ruling that Kentucky law does not confer custodial rights or formal legal standing upon foster parents. She stated that foster parents do not possess a custodial interest in the children placed under their temporary supervision, meaning they lack statutory authority to direct placement decisions over the state welfare agency.
The appellate judge also strongly defended the earlier ruling issued by Jefferson Family Court Judge Angela Johnson, who had presided over the initial proceedings and ordered that the child be returned to her biological mother. Combs wrote that Judge Johnson had meticulously examined the trauma and truth of the mother's circumstances, only to see her lawful ruling unjustifiably delayed and hindered by subsequent challenges.
According to court records cited by Combs, the biological mother faced extraordinary obstacles, including language barriers tied to her rare Mayan dialect, sexual assault, criminal prosecution, detention, and an agonizing separation from her newborn child that lasted for more than a year.
Combs also addressed public discourse surrounding the custody fight, noting that the sensitive details of the proceeding had been distorted and misrepresented through social media posts and external commentary, obscuring the severe hardships endured by the mother while detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
Federal authorities have actively prepared to facilitate the joint departure of the mother and child. Judge Combs noted that an ICE agent attended a recent session in family court to monitor the proceedings and secure the necessary travel documentation so the infant could leave the country alongside her mother within days of the handover.
Under the operational timeline established in the case, the foster parents were directed to release the one-year-old to Cabinet child welfare personnel on Sept. 7. The state agency was then tasked with transferring the infant directly to ICE custody to complete the reunification before both mother and daughter are flown to Guatemala.
The Supreme Court has directed all participating parties to submit their substantive legal arguments by Sept. 30. However, because the family court's return order remains enforceable and an emergency stay was rejected, it remains uncertain whether any future judicial ruling will occur before the mother and child depart the United States, as attorneys connected to the case continue to decline public comment under strict family court privacy laws.
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