Excerpt:

"The court pointed out, for example, that the authorities did not provide Ms. Luis with adequate legal representation while she was in Nebraska. Her first language is Quiche, a Mayan dialect, and her interpreters spoke Spanish. The court faulted state authorities as failing to contact consular officials to intervene on Ms. Luis’s behalf. And, the court said, social workers failed to provide her with proper guidance on how to recover custody of her children after she was deported.

The state did not prove Ms. Luis was unfit, the court found. Instead, it said the record showed that the state made no effort to reunify the family, largely because social service workers “thought the children would be better off staying in the United States.” State officials would not comment on the ruling.

It has been four years since Ms. Luis’s children were taken away. She last saw them in February 2008, when she came to the United States for a hearing. Ms. Luis said she never gave up hope she would get her children back, and that she could not wait to have them join her in Guatemala."