Investigation: Child Protective Services Agencies Nearly Always Blow Off Warrant Requirements To Enter Homes

Governments set up rules governing how they govern. Then they ignore them. So, what’s the point? Is it a nod to decorum before the proverbial government party guest throws up in the bathtub and hits on your mom?

If the law says an entry order or warrant is needed to enter people’s homes to investigate alleged crimes against children and you choose to ignore that law, that should make you a lawbreaker. Instead, it just makes you a child protective services investigator.

An investigation by ProPublica has found that these orders are almost never obtained. Instead, investigators simply exploit the ignorance of those targeted, bullying their way past their thresholds to perform warrantless searches of people’s homes.

By law, ACS [Administration for Children’s Services] caseworkers are not allowed to enter and search a home without either permission to enter or an entry order, which is the legal equivalent of a search warrant, unless a child is in imminent danger. But many parents don’t know that they have the right to deny these government agents or don’t push back for fear of losing their children, according to parents and their advocates. And caseworkers frequently say things that are coercive and manipulative in order to get inside homes without going to a judge, according to interviews with more than three dozen former ACS workers, New York City Family Court judges, parents, children and attorneys.

How often is this requirement ignored? Pretty much all the time. ProPublica found that in New York, ACS engaged in more than 56,000 cases a year over the last decade. In the average year over the same time span, it only obtained 94 warrants/entry orders: less than 0.2% of the total cases.

While it’s certainly true not all open cases result in home searches, home entries are extremely common. Home visits are a requirement in most states when a case is opened, which means investigators will make an appearance at people’s homes at least once, if not multiple times, before the investigation concludes.

The data obtained by ProPublica says investigators almost never obtain these orders. The statements made by agencies contacted by ProPublica back up these findings: warrants are the exception, even if they’re supposed to be the rule.

[I]n a ProPublica and NBC News survey that drew detailed responses from 40 state child welfare agencies, all said they would only obtain a warrant or court order to search a home — or call the police for help — in rare cases when they are denied entry. None said they keep any data on how often they get an entry order.

This adds up to millions of warrantless entries to homes every year, performed by agencies that rely on coercion and ignorance to gain entry. When a cop tries to enter a home, most people know they need a warrant to do it. That information has long been mainstream, thanks to decades of TV cop shows. But when a child protective services investigator shows up, people aren’t aware they are government employees performing criminal investigations and need to have the same paperwork to gain entry.

And it’s possibly more intrusive than a search by police officers. Child protective services investigators do things like look in the refrigerator (to gauge the supply of food), consider full trash bags or dirty rooms to be criminal evidence, strip search children, paw through drawers and medicine cabinets, and ask a barrage of extremely personal questions.

All of this intrusion adds up to very little actionable information, however. Homes and lives are at least temporarily turned upside down, with every intimate aspect opened up to investigators, for a net gain in child safety that’s barely measurable.

Less than 4% of the agency’s more than 56,000 cases each year end up revealing a safety situation requiring the removal of a child from a home, according to data provided by an ACS spokesperson.

ACS almost always obtains consent to enter homes, as noted above. Only 0.2% of cases involve court orders or warrants. ACS wards off scrutiny by refusing to track how often parents consent or object to home entries. And it has lobbied against proposals that would provide better protection for parents when confronted by government investigators.

ACS has also fought proposed legislation that would require caseworkers to give a Miranda-style warning to parents at their front door, informing them of their right to remain silent, to refuse entry and to speak to a lawyer or have one present.

Even law enforcement officers are astonished by what ACS investigators get away with.

Shamus Smith, an NYPD officer for more than a decade who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that while on patrol he frequently used to get calls to assist ACS. “We didn’t necessarily understand the powers and privileges they had,” he said, expressing amazement that caseworkers could comb through whatever they wanted within a home as if they had a “blank check” instead of a warrant — and no deterrent if they overstepped. “What the hell does ACS have that we don’t?” Smith said.

Well, the one thing ACS has that the NYPD doesn’t is an extreme amount of leverage. ACS investigators can remove children from homes without a court order, something that is implied, if not explicitly stated, when parents refuse entry.

The ACS also has plenty of ignorance to exploit. Parents often don’t know their rights in situations like these. But, worse than that, former ACS investigators interviewed by ProPublica said they “didn’t even know it was a thing” that parents had the constitutional right to refuse entry without a court order.

The ACS itself remains willfully ignorant, stating that its work does not have Fourth Amendment implications, claiming its work is completely separate from the criminal justice system. It could not be more wrong. The Fourth Amendment applies to the entire government. Court precedent quoted by ProPublica says entry orders from family courts are the “equivalent to search warrants.” And ACS is definitely in the criminal justice business because cases of neglect or abuse are criminal acts punishable by jailing and fines.

What’s been observed in New York City is not an aberration. ProPublica spoke to 40 different state agencies — all of which said they would only obtain a court order if they were refused entry, rather than making the initial approach with the proper paperwork in hand. None of these agencies tracked how often court orders were needed or could provide data showing how often they were refused entry.

There’s an ongoing Fourth Amendment crisis here. And the most immediate fix would be to make parents more aware of their rights in these situations — something at least one agency continues to agitate against. These agencies know how they should approach this job, especially considering how invasive their investigations are. But they choose to ignore this because it’s just so much easier to bully people into “agreeing” to have their rights violated.