SANTA CLARITA >> A 6-year-old girl was whisked away from her foster family in Santa Clarita on Monday after the family’s repeated efforts could not prevent her from being placed with her relatives in Utah, as ordered by a court.

Two women and a man — at least one of whom was an L.A. County social worker — knocked on the Page family’s door in Saugus about 2:30 p.m. About 10 minutes later, the girl was carried to a car by her foster father as his wife screamed “Lexi, I love you!” and another girl with her screamed “No!” amid sounds of a child crying.

Foster parents Rusty and Summer Page had launched an online petition claiming the girl, Lexi, would be “ripped away from the only family that she has ever known.” The reason, they say, is that Lexi is part Choctaw and under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, she is being moved to Utah to live with “nonblood-related” extended relatives of her biological father.

Earlier in the day, Rusty Page told reporters that L.A. County social workers had informed him that they intended to take Lexi the same day and that the family would comply “with very heavy hearts.”

• PHOTOS: #KeepLexiHome rally in Santa Clarita

Leslie Heimov of the Children’s Law Center of California, which is representing Lexi since she is a foster child, said that the court has decided the girl should be placed with the biological father’s relatives in Utah, including the girl’s sister who is living with the Utah couple. Another sister of the girl will be living down the street, she said.

“This has become a legal issue but it’s also a family reunification issue and a sibling issue,” Heimov said. “The law is very clear that siblings should be kept together whenever they can be and they should be placed together even if they were not initially together.”

• VIDEO: Lexi, who is part Choctaw, is taken away from her foster family in Santa Clarita

The girl has visited the Utah family regularly over the past three years, she said. They have come to Santa Clarita about once a month and they Skype about once a week.

“She has a loving relationship with them,” Heimov said. “They are not strangers in any way, shape or form. …The law defines family based on marriage, affinity or blood.”

The Page family recently launched a Change.org petition about the case that garnered more than 40,000 signatures from around the world as of Monday afternoon. When Lexi was carried into the vehicle that drove off, scores of neighbors, friends and relatives looked on. Some erupted into tears, prayed aloud or sang hymns following a few seconds of stunned silence.

Meanwhile, the foster family’s attorney, Lori Alvino McGill, said family intends to file a petition in the California Supreme Court “imminently” to keep Lexi in the state.

“We will continue to pursue the appeal, and we will press on to the U.S. Supreme Court if that becomes necessary,” she said in an email.

McGill noted that they cannot ask the U.S. Supreme court to intervene before they have a final order from the California appellate courts, which had yet to decide on their appeal.

“We are extremely disappointed that (L.A. County’s Department of Children and Family Services) would remove this little girl from her home while our appeal is pending,” she said.

• VIDEO: Rusty Page of Santa Clarita speaks about DCFS placing foster daughter Lexi, 6, in Utah

Philip Browning, director of the DCFS, said the law does not allow him to comment on details regarding specific children. But he said in an earlier statement that the agency would “remain in compliance with the court orders and laws governing our work.”

DCFS spokeswoman Amara Suarez said they try to prepare both families as well as the child for such a move to another state, including visitations. The child is usually taken by a social worker or in better situations, a family member is waiting for the child to take her to her new home. She said she could not say which of the two scenarios occurred Monday.

The National Indian Child Welfare Association said in a statement Monday that it was disturbed by a flurry of negative media attention regarding the “attempted reunification of a child with her family in Utah.”

“The foster family was well aware years ago this girl is an Indian child, whose case is subject to the requirements of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), and who has relatives who were willing to raise her if reunification with her father was unsuccessful,” the organization said in a statement.

“In fact, the only surprising turn of events is the lengths the foster family has gone to, under the advice of an attorney with a long history of trying to overturn ICWA, to drag out litigation as long as possible, creating instability for the child in question.”

The Page family and their supporters — many of whom were carrying signs outside the home that said #KeepLexihome — say the girl has been living in a stable environment for nearly five years.

Lexi “will never be the same; she’ll be changed forever,” longtime family friend Claire Stitz of Camarillo said tearfully as she walked back to her car after the girl was removed. “The very people that are supposed to be advocates for kids are hurting them.”

Steve Tolopio, who attends Grace Community Church in Sun Valley where the Page family attends, said the foster family is all Lexi has known.

“Because of an arbitrary law … it’s ripping her from a stable environment,” he said.

At 17 months, the girl was removed from the custody of her birth mother, who had substance abuse problems and had lost custody of at least six other children, and the birth father, who has an extensive criminal history and lost custody of one other child, according to 2nd District Court of Appeal documents. The father is an enrolled member of an Indian tribe, and the girl is considered an Indian child under the Indian Child Welfare Law. The tribe agreed to place the girl with a non-Indian foster family “to facilitate efforts to reunify the girl with her father,” the documents said.

At the age of 2, she was placed with the Page family, where she bonded and thrived, according to court documents. After efforts to reunify the family failed, the father, the tribe and the Department of Children and Family Services recommended the girl be placed in Utah with a non-Indian couple who are extended family of the father. The court agreed, finding that the Page family “had not proven by clear and convincing evidence that it was a certainty the child would suffer emotional harm by the transfer.”

The foster parents have appealed the court order issued earlier this month affirming the child was to be placed with the Utah couple.

Staff Photographer David Crane contributed to this report.