Americans are in an uproar about illegal immigrant parents and children separated at the border. The level of hysteria surrounding this topic has reached a fever pitch with senators like Chuck Schumer mugging distraught for the cameras at every opportunity. While the shrill voices shriek loudly about the rights of Mexicans and other assorted border jumpers, American parental rights are being stripped from them, unconstitutionally, every single day. (Chuck Schumer has yet to freak out about it on national television.) American parents have lost their due process and Fourth Amendment rights, and most of them don’t even know it. Most anyone who has been visited by Child Protective Services can testify to the absolute terror that the state can inflict on a family for very little or no reason at all.

Right now in the state of Mississippi, Michael Chambers is missing his little girl, Belle. When Belle was around two years old her mother abandoned her in the care of her grandmother. Chambers took custody of her after that. Lacking resources and the ability to track down his ex to serve her with custody papers, Chambers just took care of his daughter like a father should. Like many single parents, personal disputes often result in one parent harassing the other through any means possible. Belle’s mother would occasionally call Chambers and shortly after the calls CPS would show up knocking on his door. The social workers where he lived understood the nature of the calls but when he moved to Warren county, things changed.

His nightmare began when a Mississippi social worker, Kyra Reed (who also goes by Kyra Carson), knocked on his door demanding entrance without a warrant. Chambers was never told what the charges were. “She didn’t tell me what I was accused of and demanded to interview my 6-year-old daughter without my presence,” Chambers told PJM. “I told her that was unacceptable, but she was more than welcome to talk to her with me there without me interfering. She seemed perturbed, but accepted that. She then told me she wanted to search my house,” said Chambers. “I told her I had no problem with that, but wanted her to get a court order or a warrant as I am a bit of a constitutionalist and would just feel better having that respected. She was immediately angry. She hopped in her car without another word and drove off.”

An American asking for a proper warrant signed by a judge to search his private property is 100 percent within his rights to do, or so we thought. “The next day, I got my daughter early from school and went to the CPS office with her to speak to a supervisor to make sure they understood that I wasn’t hiding or attempting elusiveness of any sort,” said Chambers. “I allowed the supervisor to look her over and explained my concerns about my insistence on a warrant before the search. I was told that the warrant wasn’t a problem to get and that they would do that so we could close the case and finish out the interaction.”

But that’s not what happened.

“I returned home and got a call from my new landlord, saying that they had contacted him demanding that they be let in,” continued Chambers. “He told them that they needed a warrant.” CPS did not stop trying to get around Chambers’ insistence that his Fourth Amendment rights be invoked. “A different supervisor then called me and once again demanded entry,” said Chambers, exasperated. “I again explained that I needed a warrant before I could allow this and reminded her that, according to their own statements, this was easy for them to get and I would prefer that they did.” It is perfectly reasonable to ask for a government agency to obtain a warrant before searching someone’s home.

“The original worker [Kyra Reed] showed up at my door again, this time with two sheriff’s deputies,” said Chambers. “She said that she didn’t need a warrant and I needed to let her in,” he said incredulously. “At this point I became afraid, but I pointed out to her that if she didn’t need a warrant, she wouldn’t be asking for entry. The officers would simply force me to let her in.” Luckily for Chambers, the police officers knew better. “The officers stated that they would not [illegally search his home] as she had no judge’s order,” he said.

According to Chambers, “She [Kyra Reed] told me that if I made her get a warrant, she would take my child instead.” Reed left again, unable to obtain illegal entry. But she didn’t stay away. “She returned with another sheriff’s deputy,” said Chambers. “I answered the door thinking that surely she would have [the warrant] this time and hopefully, we could just get this done and over with. I was instead handed a subpoena to appear in court in the morning and was told that they had taken my child from school.” No warrant was ever obtained.

PJM reached out to the sheriff of Warren County and was told that no warrant is necessary for CPS to take a child, but they would need a warrant to search a private home. This is an outrageous abuse of Fourth Amendment rights, which are supposed to protect citizens from unlawful search and seizure. Why are children, a parent’s most valuable and cherished possession, not protected from illegal seizure without due process? Do children belong to parents in the United States? Or do they belong to the state that allows parents to care for them and assume all financial and emotional burden while retaining no ultimate authority? The state would not be able to seize your car without a warrant, but your child is fair game. It seems that in most states, any CPS worker has the power to claim that a child is “in danger” without specifics and then remove the child with no hearing or judge’s oversight. The parents are then put in a defensive position where they must fight the state for the return of the child instead of the state having to prove why the child needs to be removed from the home in the first place. This is done to babies who are still nursing and even children with special needs! Some of them end up dead. Chambers was separated from his daughter for over two months before his hearing and allowed only thirty minute supervised visitation with her where she reported abuse from the other children in the foster home where she was placed. Chambers made a secret recording of Belle reporting the abuse to CPS workers, but CPS refused to tell Chambers if they would do anything about the reported abuse.

PJM reached out to Mississippi CPS for comment on the behavior of their agent and the abuse allegations and received no response. Multiple phone calls during business hours went unanswered, voicemails were unreturned, and email inquiries came back “undeliverable.”

How is this possible in America? Look to the Clintons for a law passed during their time in the White House. Hillary Clinton, in particular, fought hard for the passage of this terrible law.

The Daily Kos (unbelievably) reported: “The law is called the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). But that’s one of those Orwellian titles Congress loves. It’s not about adoption and it’s not about safe families. Passed in 1997, one year after the welfare law, it had exactly the same target. ASFA was about demonizing impoverished women, especially women of color, and taking away their children.”

This law is so bad that even the far-left cranks have to admit it. According to Richard Wexler ofDaily Kos,

Here’s what ASFA did:

ASFA encouraged a take-the-child-and-run mentality on the frontlines of child welfare. Thousands more families, overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately families of color, were destroyed by wrongful removal of the children.

Instead of reducing the foster care population, ASFA increased it, trapping thousands more children in a system that, according to one major study, churns out walking wounded four times out of five.

ASFA effectively turned the child welfare system into the ultimate middle-class entitlement: Step right up and take a poor person’s child for your very own.

And when the army of childless yuppies didn’t show up to adopt in anywhere near the numbers predicted, ASFA created a generation of “legal orphans” with no ties to birth parents and no adoptive homes either — probably at least 100,000 more such “legal orphans” than had ASFA not become law.

Michael Chambers works four jobs to keep his child clothed and fed. He is exactly the type of person this law terrorizes. He can’t afford decent legal representation. His first lawyer never even gave the judge evidence that CPS appeared to have lied in court about Chambers’ behavior. On his first court date, CPS claimed that he had gone to Belle’s school and caused a scene, screaming, “I love Hitler!” The judge did not ask for evidence of this disturbance, but removed the child from his care until further court appearances. Chambers denies ever doing anything like this. In fact, he investigated this alleged incident himself and the school could produce no records of it. PJM attempted to submit a FOIA request to the school district for a record of a disturbance but was given false contact information more than once. Calls to the school were met with stony silence and refusal to comment on the incident or correct the FOIA contact information. Further, the sheriff of Warren County produced a signed letter stating that he also had no record of any such incident happening involving Chambers. This letter was never given to the judge and this alleged “incident” was the only reason for the removal of Belle from her father, according to Chambers.

Even more mind-blowing, the judge, John Price, dismissed all charges of abuse and neglect against Michael Chambers in a subsequent hearing but placed Bell with her mother, whom she has not seen in four years, with no explanation or investigation into her suitability as a parent. Lawyers involved in the case said they had never seen any action like it and that the judge’s order might even be illegal. Chambers’ daughter was taken on false premises without cause, put into a foster home that caused her great distress, and then placed in the care of a stranger with a history of abandoning her. She has been taken out of state by her mother and neither the judge nor CPS arranged for any visitation or even a way for Chambers to contact her. Chambers has spent his last dime on the legal battles so far and is struggling to come up with more so he can continue to try to recover his child.

Entire websites are dedicated to reporting on this type of abuse like Medical Kidnap, which sees something even more sinister in the AFSA law–child trafficking for profit.

“For instance, in the case of foster care, the present reimbursement to state and local government for each child taken into foster care is approximately $6000/month. Yet the foster care provider (the foster parent) receives only somewhere around $600/month. Allowing about the same for administrative costs, each child in foster care is worth about $5000/month; that’s pure profit on the bottom line!” Medical Kidnap explained. The foster care system is monetized and it’s not just foster parents profiting. “The money goes to tens of thousands of a) state employees, b) collateral professionals, such as lawyers, court personnel, court investigators, evaluators and guardians, judges, and c) DSS contracted vendors such as counselors, therapists, more ‘evaluators,’ junk psychologists, residential facilities, foster parents, adoptive parents, MSPCC, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, YMCA, etc. This newspaper is not big enough to list all of the people in this state who have a job, draw a paycheck, or make their profits off the kids in DSS custody,” says Medical Kidnap.

That’s terrifying. Why are poor people’s children for sale? Monetizing the removal of children from parents can end in nothing but corruption and abuse.

Pamela Wright of Wolf Rising, an organization that helps fight parental alienation, has taken notice of Chambers’ case and is hard at work trying to reunite him and many other parents with their children who were unfairly taken by the state. “When the system fails, a parent has little recourse,” Wright told PJM. “Whether it’s due to an unethical social worker, a treacherous ex, or an apathetic, law-lazy attorney or judge, it’s the children who truly suffer,” Wright continued. “Even spending thousands of dollars on a lawyer does not guarantee they know how or will do the work to get the kids safe,” she said. “The way to do this isn’t taught in school. It’s done through effective strategies, experienced help and teamwork.” Wright has assembled a team of lawyers across the country who are trained in aggressive strategies to get children returned to loving parents. “This is like Pearl Harbor — the attack on the one who doesn’t want the fight,” said Wright. “God knows what would have happened if America didn’t respond with greater force and higher motive — and that’s exactly what the parents of a hostage child needs to do.”

Parents who find themselves alienated from their children by the state can contact Wolf Rising at [email protected]

Please consider helping Chambers get his daughter back through his GoFundMe page. People like Chambers don’t have the resources to fight successful campaigns against the monolithic and all-powerful state.