A 6-year-old girl in Santa Clarita was taken from the home of her foster parents all because of a race conflict. The little girl told her daddy not to let social service take her away. Social workers tried to calm the little girl down as her foster father made his way out of the house to hand her daughter to the Department of Children and Families on Monday.
Lexi, 6, has lived with her foster family for 5 years. On Monday, social services came to her foster family's house to take her because it was discovered that she is 1.5 percent Native American and her foster family is white. Rusty Page, Lexi's foster father unwillingly walked through the crowd of people to hand Lexi over. She screamed, 'don't let them take me away' as she was made to sit at the back of a black care with government workers. Her foster mother Summer Page burst into tears as she shouted 'I love you, Lexi'.
According to CBS, the decision to remove the girl from her foster family happened after a Native American tribe won a long and bitter custody battle. Not a lot of people knew about a law which apparently prohibits Native Americans to be adopted by people of different race. Rusty and his wife Summer acknowledged that they lost the battle and said, "With very heavy hearts we're complying with the order."
Court records revealed that Lexi's biological father has a long history of crimes committed and her mother had a substance abuse. Dailymail.co.uk reported that Lexi's biological parents lost custody of their daughter when she was only 17 months old. However, the Choctaw tribe, which Lexi's parents are a part of, agreed to let Lexi stay with the Pages until the time that Lexi could be reunited with her relatives. The tribe issued a statement on Monday saying, said, "the Choctaw nation desires the best for this Choctaw child."
"Whether it's a Native American kid or not, have the same end goal -- which is to reunite a child with his or her biological relatives so they can be raised in the family they were born into," a lawyer for the tribe said.
The Pages said that they are the only family the little girl knows and that they plan to take the case to the California Supreme Court.
