NYC NOW - A Mother's Fight Against NYC's Emergency Child Removal System

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

When Meredith Trainor's 11-month-old daughter tested positive for cocaine at a hospital, New York City caseworkers removed the baby from her arms, without a court order, even though Meredith had been at work when it happened. Five days later, a family court judge ordered the baby returned. Now Meredith is suing the city. WNYC reporter Samantha Max walks us through her case and what it reveals about how the city's Administration for Children's Services uses emergency removals, a process that separates more than 1,300 children from their parents every year. -Got any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail]

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Junae Pierre. For those of you who are parents, could you imagine your baby being taken away from you without knowing where they're going? Well, that's exactly what happened to a woman in Queens some years ago. On today's episode, we look into a lawsuit between New York City's administration for children's services and a mother who argues that the agency took her daughter without a court order. Before we get into that, though, here's what's happening in our region. When it comes to filling New York City's budget gap,

Governor Kathy Hockel has some advice for city leaders. We've encouraged the Speaker and the Mayor to do what every other city has to do is look at your expenses. The message comes after the governor shot down Mayor Zoran Mamdani's latest push to tax the rich. Mumdani and Council Speaker Julie Minnan are urging Albany lawmakers to reduce a lucrative tax credit for wealthy business owners. They say reform of the credit could help address the city's budget gap by generating almost $1 billion in revenue. The pass-through entity tax, also known as P-TETT, allows business owners and partners to fully deduct state and local tax payments on their

federal tax returns, bypassing the usual limit. The PTET is essentially a loophole that allows high-income earners to reduce their federal tax burden. Who benefits? Millionaires and multimillionaires. Governor Hokel says she's unwilling to change the tax credit. Hogle recently proposed a PA-to-Tare tax that would affect people with second homes in New York City worth over $5 million. One of New York's largest health systems was among those in the spotlight this week as members of Congress grilled hospital executives during a hearing on rising health care costs. Dr. Brian Donnelly is the CEO of New York Presbyterian. He says there are multiple factors driving up hospital prices. We are facing substantial cost pressures, such as labor, supplies, and pharmaceuticals.

But some lawmakers pointed to hospital consolidation as the primary factor driving up health care costs. New York Presbyterian was sued by the Justice Department last month for allegedly stifling competition to keep its prices high. A spokesperson for New York Presbyterian says the case is without merit. The lineup for this season's Summer Stage Festival is out. The annual outdoor performance series will bring over six. 60 concerts to 13 parks across the city. The events span all five boroughs and go from May to October. Highlights include free shows by Lori Anderson, Spoon, Maivus Staples, Dougie Fresh, and so many others.

Summer Stage also celebrates 40 years this summer. Its first show was a SunRot Archestra concert at the Central Park Band Show back in June 1986. New York City's administration for children's services is supposed to protect children from harmful. environments. But according to one mom, they don't always get it right. More on that after a quick break. Welcome back. So I have one daughter. She recently turned three this past January. Right now, her main interest is baby dolls. So, you know, anytime we leave the house, there's at least one baby doll coming with her. Meredith Traynor's daughter was 11 months old when caseworkers from New York City's administration for children's services took her out of her mom.

mother's arms. And I kept asking why. I kept getting more anxious and I kept asking why. The caseworkers did this without a court order. That's allowed in situations called emergency removals, which are meant to be a last resort when the city feels that children are in imminent danger. But city data shows that these types of removals occur on a regular basis and make up about half of abuse and neglect removals every year. Traynor is suing the city, arguing that her daughter's removal was unlawful. Her lawsuit claims that city social workers often rush to remove kids from their parents when it's not a real emergency and that those separations violate the rights of parents and kids.

WNYC reporter Samantha Max covered Traynor's case, and she's here with me to walk us through it. Hey, Sam. Hey. All right, Sam, how did all of this start? It started a few years ago on New Year's Eve when Meredith was at work. I remember being really, maybe it sounds silly. I didn't want to work on New Year's Eve because I wanted to spend it with my daughter and I was going to like set up balloons and do this whole photo shoot.

So I was already like not super happy to go into work that day. I mean, who wants to work on New Year's Eve? Exactly. Meredith is a social worker and basically she has to work some weekends. She says her baby's father, who was. was her fiance at the time, was taking care of their daughter. Meredith says that while she was at work, the baby's father called and told her that their daughter was rubbing her eyes a lot. Her face looked a little red. So she starts asking questions. Like,

has the baby taken a nap? Maybe she's tired. It's middle of the day. So it's typically the time she would need a nap. And then he called back again. And he said, no, like, she's really sluggish. She's really rubbing her eyes. We're at the park. I think she picks something. up. Like, grab something, put in her mouth. And my first thought was maybe she's having some sort of allergic reaction to something. And Meredith says the father sounded nervous, which that was making her nervous. So to be careful, she says that she told the father, just take the baby to the hospital. And then from there, I left work immediately and drove up to Queens to the emergency room. While Meredith is on her way there, she says the father calls and puts her on the phone with

someone who works at the hospital, and she finds out that her baby has been given Narcan. What, Narcan? And then my heart stopped because, you know, I've heard of Narcan, especially working in a hospital. Like the drug Narcan that's used to reverse, like, opioid overdoses. Yeah, that Narcan, which Meredith says she was familiar with, but she says she was just really confused and shocked by all of this. Like, she's trying to understand why her daughter would need Narcan. And according to her lawsuit that she filed, hospital staff thought that maybe she had ingested opiates the baby. And ultimately, a drug test found that she had tested positive for

cocaine. It definitely was a blur because I was so blindsided. I was very confused. A lot of the details of exactly what happened are still a little unclear. So we got home that evening. I mean, I obviously had a lot of questions from my ex. So that evening, you know, Meredith is having all these questions trying to make sense of exactly, like, how did cocaine get into her baby system? Yeah. She was with this person who was her fiancé. They were engaged. They'd been together for several years.

Did he have a pass of drug use? So she knew that he had a history of drug use, but she thought he had never used drugs while they were together. So she has all these questions for him and just trying to figure out what happened. And then she's also thinking about the social worker at the hospital who told her that ACS would probably be coming to see her. And ACS, that's the administration for children's services. Yes, that's the agency that investigates allegations of abuse and neglect on the part of parents. So Meredith says that while she and her then-fiancee were at the hospital, a social worker had come by and told them that she was going to have to call the administration for children. services. But she said, don't worry, they're going to visit you sometime in the next couple

days. Like, it's not a big deal. You know, we just have to do this. According to the lawsuit, caseworkers and police officers later that night came to her Astoria apartment. The baby's father was arrested and caseworkers ordered that he stay away from their daughter. So Meredith says that, you know, she completely understood why her fiancé at the time needed to be removed while the caseworkers got more information, but she was not thinking that anything would affect her personally being able to be with her daughter and have custody of her. Right. After all, she wasn't even with her kid. She was at work when all of this happened. Right. So Meredith says that she and her daughter went to stay with her mom. Meredith was actually

pregnant at the time, so she wanted to be with her mom to have a little extra help and be closer to the hospital where she worked. And I was about to give my daughter a bath so it was. would have been 7.30-ish in the evening. And I got a call from the caseworker. This caseworker says we're at the apartment. Where are you? And I said, oh, I told you sometimes I stay with my mom. And she said, no, you need to come home. Like, we're doing an unplanned visit is what I think she phrased it as.

So she comes back to the apartment. And she says two ACS employees are already in the lobby. I don't know how they got themselves in, but they were like inside the lobby area. They all go up to Meredith's apartment, and she says police also showed up. So then from there, she says things start moving quickly. And basically, she remembers holding her daughter. She wanted to breastfeed her. And the ACS workers are just trying to take her daughter.

They won't tell her where they're going. They just said the Bronx. They wouldn't let her nurse, which her daughter had only been, nursing at that point. She kept asking, what are you going to feed her? They didn't know her bedtime routine. They, you know, didn't know all these different things about how she would fall asleep at night. So she says she was just begging them to allow her to nurse her daughter, but she says it seemed like they kind of just wanted to move things along. So while she was holding her baby, she says the ACS workers took her daughter who just was screaming.

Man, this is all so traumatic. Yeah, I mean, one of the moments that really stuck out to me as I was first reading her lawsuit was that as the officers and social workers were leaving, that Meredith could still hear her daughter crying. And she says she collapsed and a neighbor came and held her. And she was just thinking to herself, who am I supposed to call? Like, I don't know where my daughter is. And she just says that she felt totally helpless and wondering how. she would get her daughter back and make sure she was safe. Yeah.

So at this point, the baby's father had been arrested and ACS workers had already been to Meredith's apartment. They checked it out. And I guess they didn't document any safety concerns. So why was Meredith's daughter taken in the first place? Meredith's daughter was taken under this process called an emergency removal. New York law allows ACS to take. children without first getting permission from a judge if they believe that that child may face

an imminent danger and there isn't enough time to apply for an order. This is something called an emergency removal. ACS theta shows the agency has taken kids without first getting approval from a judge in about half of its abuse and neglect removals over the last several years. Traynor and her daughter were apart for five days before they went before a family court judge. Wow, that seems like a lifetime for a mom, I'm sure. Yeah, and, you know, the family court judge did order that ACS returned the baby to her mother, according to court records. And that's why Meredith is suing because she feels like this was a wrongful removal

that it was not rooted in the law. Meredith says she understands why the father needed to be separated from the child while officials gathered information, but she doesn't understand why she was kept away from her daughter. And Sam, I don't know, maybe it's just me, but this all seems so very sloppy this process. But is this common? Well, Meredith's attorneys have noted that this is at least the eighth lawsuit that has been filed in recent years alleging an illegal emergency removal. Every year, more than 1,300 children are separated without a court order. You know, some of those kids will end up continuing to be separated from their parents because a judge feels like it's the safest thing to do while a case is pending. But in a lot of those cases, I think it was about a quarter. The child is given back within, like, you know, an initial hearing, like what happened with Meredith's case.

I talked to David Shalick Klein from the Family Justice Law Center. Courts are pronouncing ACS policies illegal. And as a matter of public policy, they are determining ACS's actions are harmful to and traumatic for families. He says these types of family separations are traumatic and scary. They lead to these unpredictable situations where kids are terrified. I mean, parents feel like their kids are being kidnapped. Yeah. The Family Justice Law Center frames Meredith's case as a broader systemic pattern.

The other thing I should note is Meredith is actually an outlier in a case like this. She is a white woman, and these family separations, a lot of data has found that they disproportionately affect people of color. And then, of course, you know, this is a case that we're hearing about because a lawsuit has been filed, but not every family who goes through this is going to. going to have the resources to file a lawsuit and try to get some sort of accountability for what they feel like was an illegal removal. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I'm wondering, Sam, has ACS responded to this? Yeah, so I was in touch with ACS spokesperson, Marissa Kaufman, who told me that the agency

is committed to keeping families together whenever possible. She says emergency removals are only considered when all other hours. are ruled out and that they have these teams of trained child protective staff to try to assess whether a child really is an imminent danger. But the other thing I should note is this also, to an extent, comes down to scheduling because you can only get a court order if you can go to court. And family court is not open late at night and it's not open on the weekends. So, you know, there is also a chance that sometimes they're just not.

able to go before a judge. So instead they feel like they have to use an emergency removal while they wait for court to be open. But I guess like I'm wondering if there's a sense of immediacy depending on the child, right? Like Meredith's kid when this happened was 11 months old. Meredith was still breastfeeding at the time. Like when we talk about factors that need to go into account, is that something that's brought up? I mean, they are, ACS is arguing that they are to taking those things into account that they are thinking about the potential emotional effect. But, you know, obviously this is going to be a case-by-case basis where you have individuals who are making these decisions. And one of the things that an attorney told me that was helpful for me

to kind of think about is when you go before a judge and you ask for a child to be removed, not only do you have to make a legal argument, but a judge can also put certain parameters in place to have oversight over the process. And sometimes would even help the caseworkers to think through, okay, how can we do this removal in a way that's going to be the least traumatic way possible for the child? How can we make sure that, you know, these different protections are in place so that people's rights aren't being violated while doing what's needed to protect a child? So at the end of the day, when you have an emergency removal, that is kind of the oversight that's not there because it's just these people who presumably are, you know, making decisions based off of the information that they have and whatever directives they may be getting. But they don't have that oversight of a judge who can kind of take a bigger look. Yeah. How are they doing now?

How's Meredith and her kid and her – now she can. She has another kid. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that really stuck out with me in my conversation with Meredith was that her family court case was still pending when she was in labor. And she told me that she felt safest when her child was inside of her because she was afraid that once the child was born, that it could be taken away from her.

And, you know, and she said that this experience, like, has really just stuck with her and colored her experience of being a parent. And, you know, we were flipping through photos of her kids and she was telling me about how they love going to the playground and eating mac and cheese and all these different things. But, you know, this is still like an anxiety that kind of gets in the way sometimes of her feeling like she can be just the happy parent that she wants to be. So, you know, Kids, you never know what they're going to remember when they're so little. But I think she's filing this lawsuit because, you know, from the outside, five days might not seem like a lot of time.

But when it's five days away from your baby while you're pregnant, it just several years later, it's still really stuck with her. Yeah, for sure. I can only imagine. That's WNYC, Samantha Max. Thanks a lot, Sam. Thanks, Janay. And thank you for listening to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre. See you next time.