Our national research organization, the Latino Policy Coalition (LPC) has submitted an official complaint for the Universal Periodic Review by the United Nations Human Rights Council regarding the human rights record of the United States of America.

The 10 page complaint charges the U.S. with routinely and consistently violating human rights by officially causing the de facto misappropriation and removal of at least an estimated 46,000 children from their immigrant parents. These practices condoned by the United States government violate six Articles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and nine Articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

"During 2011, 46,000 mothers and fathers of at least one U.S. citizen child were part of massive ICE deportations; and many of these children (unable to be claimed by their parents held in ICE detention centers) were forced into county foster care systems-as abandoned and neglected children.

Subsequently, some infants have been put up for adoption, apparently making the practice of shattering undocumented working families a standard and acceptable legal procedure in the United States.

At least 5,100 children in this circumstance are now MISSING spread throughout the country in a gulag of federal, state, and county conflicting laws and procedures-which keep their rightful parents from finding them,and regaining custody either in the U.S. or in Latin America.

Human rights advocates need to move on the national and international level to reunite these families; and end these blunt violations of perhaps the oldest and most fundamental of human rights: a parent's right to raise and care for their own child.

The UN complaint asks the United Nations to press for immediate steps and remedies from the United States to begin the process of reunification of affected families to include:

The issuance of a United Nations Writ of Habeas Corpus requiring that the President of the United States produce a complete and detailed list of children who have been removed from the custody and care of their parents as a result of detention or deportation proceedings initiated against immigrant parents.

Requesting U.S. President Barack Obama- to issue a Presidential Executive Order to identify the affected children for reunification with their parents; and to end the practice of governmental jurisdictions within the USA engaging in the arbitrary removal of children from the custody and care of their immigrant parents.

To help, visit: www.latinopolicycoalition.org

(The Latino Policy Coalition is a national non-partisan non-profit consortium of the country's leading Latino research organizations and scholars. LPC is chaired by former San Francisco Supervisor Jim Gonzalez, the author of the nation's first City of Sanctuary Ordinance to protect the rights of undocumented immigrants).