Custody of Unaccompanied Minor

This child custody nerd (well staturory interpretation nerd in general) who is also profoundly interested in the handling of immigration issues, found this case fascinating. Custody of Vale Mass. App. Ct. 24-P-1190 (12/23/2025) involved two brothers (12 and 17) from Honduras who were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in Texas and placed with an "uncle" in Indianapolis, Indiana, under the auspices of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

They ran away from Indiannapolis and ended up in Revere, MA. A missing person report was filed in Indianapolis. Evenutally, a neglect report (51A) was filed with Mass. DCF. A DCF worker started working with the "Vale" and his brother. They then moved to Brockton, MA, without telling the DCF worker.

MA DCF filed a care and protection petition (Mass. Gen. Laws c. 119, § 24) and the Juvenile Court judge questioned whether Mass. or Ind. had jurisdiction under the Mass. Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (MCCJA) and had DCF contact Indiana authorities. IN then filed a requisition under the rules of the Interstate Commission on Juveniles (ICJ). Though DCF reported to the MA judge that no one in IN had had custody of the children prior to the filing of the C&P, the judge decided that the children needed to be returned to IN. By the time of the appeal, Vale's brother had turned 18, so he was not part of it, and from here on I will refer only to Vale or the child.

The uncle told the ORR that he did not want the child back and then disappeared from IN.

My rendtion of these facts may be out of chronological order. I wanted to highlight the intersting events without spending too much time getting the order of events exactly right. The primary relevant event is that the MA C&P was filed before any IN court action.

The child's lawyer filed a motion to stay removal to permit them the opportunity to appeal. It was denied. They appealed to a single justice in the Mass. Appeals Court (MAC), who stayed the removal, which allowed Vale to stay in MA while the case was considered.

Vale ran away from IN because the uncle was demanding that they pay him $8,000.00 for the costs of getting them into the country and compelled them to work for him to work off the debt. The U.S. Office on Trafficking in Persons found that Vale was, therefore, a victim of a severe form of trafficking in persons.

The MAC ruled that because no one in IN had custody of Vale before DCF was awarded temporary custody in the MA C&P, the ICJ did not apply and because MA had jurisdiction under the MCCJA, which has provisions required by the federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act and was similar to the IN child custody law, MA had jurisdiction and IN did not.

So Vale got to stay with his MA foster parents.