A new class action lawsuit accuses New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services of illegally separating families without court orders.

The suit claims ACS regularly abuses its emergency removal authority and disproportionately targets Black and Latino families.

One of the plaintiffs says she went to ACS for help, but ended up losing her own children.

Joyce McMillan, executive director of Just Making a Change for Families, said families need support outside of the agency investigating them.

"One of the things I believe is a lot of the programs that should be helping families should be moved out of ACS,” McMillan said. “They should not be housed within the agency that is doing policing the families. They should be in areas where people feel comfortable attending and community led organizations."

Melissa Friedman, an attorney with Legal Aid’s Juvenile Rights Practice, said investing in the most affected communities could reduce the need for ACS intervention.

"I think that if we invest in the most affected communities, the most surveilled communities, we would actually really minimize the cost to ACS,” said Friedman. “And we could move those funds to creating jobs in those communities and then supporting families in those communities and having those communities support each other when they need assistance. I'm not saying that ACS should never be involved, but we can really minimize the need and we can minimize emergency removals."

The lawsuit also claims many of these removals happened even when there was enough time to get a judge’s approval.

News 12 reached out to ACS for comment.

“ACS is committed to keeping families together whenever that is safely possible. Emergency removals are only considered in circumstances where all other options are ruled out, and teams of highly trained child protective staff determine that a child is in imminent danger and that there is not enough time to get a court order. In more than 97 percent of child protection cases, children are not removed from their homes. We are reviewing this lawsuit with the Law Department,” an ACS spokesperson said.