This past summer, I had the privilege of working at the Brooklyn Defenders’ Family Defense Practice (BDS) as the inaugural Center for Gender Justice and Law (CGJL) summer public interest fellow. BDS is the primary provider of legal representation to parents and other caregivers accused of abuse or neglect in Kings County Family Court. BDS's clients in family court are disproportionately mothers, a vast majority of whom are poor, Black, and/or immigrant women and include a significant number of mothers who, as children, were involved in the child welfare system. BDS provides zealous representation to caregivers facing the removal of their children to the foster care system with the goal of keeping families together safely or reunifying families as soon as possible when separation occurs. As a legal intern, I was able to see firsthand how the family policing system operates with impunity and causes widespread harm to families, especially Black families, under the guise of “child protection.” It was jarring to witness just how routinely family separation took place, and how the justification for family separation was so often due to families’ poverty, systemic racism, lack of stable housing or childcare, or mental health diagnoses or intellectual disabilities. Throughout my time at BDS, I was able to work on all stages of child welfare proceedings, from counseling clients at intake—the family court’s equivalent to arraignments in criminal courts—to assisting in preparation for emergency hearings for family reunification to writing complex evidentiary motions in limine prior to trials. It was a pleasure to be CGJL’s inaugural summer public interest fellow working at the intersection of gender and racial justice to keep families together safely and to defend them against attacks on their constitutional right to family integrity.