Part-Native American Girl Removed from Longtime Foster Family
Update, March 22: Despite protests and the Pages' appeal, the Department of Children and Family Services removed Lexi from their home on March 21.
The Page family issued a statement after the 6-year-old girl was taken from their home:
Our family is so incredibly devastated. Our hearts are broken and we are trying to make sense of everything that has happened with our three other children who witnessed their sister Lexi forcefully ripped away from our family by strangers.
But nobody could possibly be more devastated than our 6-year-old daughter who found herself restrained in a car and driven away to go and live in a foreign place hundreds of miles from her family, friends, teachers, home and life...
Let me speak directly to the people who took our daughter and who have her now. Please search deep into your heart and soul and do what's best for Lexi. Do the right thing and bring Lexi back home. Do not keep her one more minute. Do not force her to spend one more night away from us and her siblings. Look her in the eyes and just ask her what she wants. She will tell you she wants to go home. I'm begging every American within the sound of my voice to help us bring Lexi back home.
Original, March 21: For nearly five years, Rusty and Summer Page of Santa Clarita, California, have been foster parents to a 6-year-old girl named Lexi. But the family, which also includes the Pages' three biological children, could be broken up any day.
Lexi is 1/64 - or 1.5% - Choctaw Native American, and the Department of Children and Family Services intends to take her to live with her extended Native American family in Utah, People reports. The agency is applying the Indian Child Welfare Act, which seeks to keep Native American children with Native American families.
After spending the first year of her life moving from foster home to foster home, Lexi found a stable home with the Page family, according to the change.org account set up to petition congress for assistance. (The petition has exceeded the required 25,000 signatures.) Since then, the Pages have spent more than two years trying to legally adopt her, Fox 11 reports.
"Lexi doesn't know another home," Rusty told Fox 11. "She finally knows what mom and dad means and they want to take that away from her. And we can't stand idly by while that happens."
His wife, Summer added: "As hard as it is, and as scary as it is to go up against the people we going up against, we're putting everything on the line. A mom is not going to sit back, a dad is not going to sit back. We're going to fight until the very end."
The Pages' attorney released a statement explaining the Utah family Lexi will live with are "distant extended relatives by marriage." The statement also claims that the relatives are not members of the tribe nor do they have Indian heritage.
Still, the tribe - the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma - feel living with them is in her best interest.
The organization told ABC 7 in a statement: "The tribe's values of faith, family and culture are what makes our tribal identity so important to us. Therefore we will continue to work to maintain these values and work toward the long-term best interest of this child."
Supporters of the Page family gathered around their home at 9 a.m. March 20, holding signs that read, "Keep Lexi home," reported The Santa Clarita Valley Signal. And according to ABC7, it worked - they effectively blocked the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) from retrieving Lexi and forced the agents to postpone the meeting. The family's attorneys intended to go to the California Supreme Court on March 21 to file a stay.
But the Pages have to keep the custody battle from their children because they are "under specific orders" not to tell them anything. "We're holding it together for the kids," Summer told reporters. "Inside, we're dying."
Friend and neighbor Maurcio Gasca was among the protesters. "Our kids have been friends for a long time," Gasca told The Santa Clarita Valley Signal. "It breaks my heart as a dad and as a friend. I've seen how happy Lexi is and how loved she is."
Rusty and Summer used their Facebook page to offer their gratitude: "To all our dear supporters - we thank you so much for your amazing show of friendship. We have been so blessed to have people we know & people we don't show up in person & in spirit today."
But it may not be enough: ABC7 reported that DCFS agents were expected to come pick up Lexi sometime in the afternoon on March 21.
