Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Arturo G.

Introduction

The trial court, feeling compelled by the Indian Child Welfare Act, ordered the minor in this dependency case removed from the home of the only parents the minor knows, and transferred to a home on a Chippewa Indian reservation in Minnesota. We apply the “existing Indian family doctrine” to reverse the trial court’s placement order.

*1279 Summary

In a hearing under Welfare and Institutions Code section 366.26, 1 the trial court terminated parental rights and, under authority of the Indian Child Welfare Act (the ICWA or the Act) ( 25 U.S.C. § 1901 et seq.), ordered Santos Y. (hereinafter the Minor) removed from his foster adoptive home of his de facto parents, Arturo G. and Lucila G. (also known as Lucila C.) (hereinafter Appellants), and placed in a preadoptive home on the Grand Portage Band Reservation of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe in Minnesota.

The Minor is a two-and-one-half-year-old, multiethnic boy bom prematurely November 25, 1998, in Los Angeles. He has lived in foster care since birth, and with Appellants since he was three months old. Appellants presently remain his caretakers, and were granted de facto parent status. The Minor regards…