From Detroit Free Press
The state of Michigan has one of the largest Muslim-American populations in the country, but community leaders say the state suffers from a lack of Muslim foster care families to take care of the large number of Muslim foster children.
When Amal Mohamed was 14, she left her home of Alexandria, Egypt, and immigrated to the U.S. to live with her mother in metro Detroit.
Knowing little English, Mohamed arrived in Michigan in July 2009, set to live with a woman she had only seen four times — at ages 3, 6, 9 and 11.
“I remember just being in the airport eating French fries and drinking Coke. I was really out of it. It didn’t really hit me until I was here. I went to sleep, and I woke up: ‘Oh, this is not a dream. I’m really here,’” Mohamed said.
It was different. It looked different. It felt different.
Like any new arrival, Mohamed faced her fair share of adjustments, but the biggest one would come eight months later, when she was removed from her mother’s home and placed in foster care. She would become one of an unknown number of Muslim children caught in the custody of the state with a dearth of Muslim families to foster them.
The State of Michigan does not formally track how many Muslim children are in the foster care system, but Muslim community leaders say there are dozens, at least 85 in southeast Michigan alone, and not enough families to keep up.
For a state that has one of the largest Muslim-American populations in the country at about 275,000, there are few Muslim foster families in Michigan.
Most Muslim children end up in the care of relatives, but those invisible few who are left have little options.
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