California and Mexico: More Than Just Neighbors

Alisha Griffin, CA DCSS Director

Mexico is California’s direct southern neighbor and many families find themselves divided by the border. California and Mexico share hundreds of intergovernmental child support cases making it imperative to try to establish stronger partnerships and cooperation between the child support services agencies involved.

Over the last few years, California and Mexico courts and agencies have collaborated and strengthened their relationships to help hundreds of families obtain the support they need. These collaborations include developing multiple agreements to clarify and streamline processes, cross training California and Mexico child support staff, and setting up electronic payment cards for international payments to get money to families quicker and easier.

2014: Memorandum of understanding (MOU)

California State Department of Child Support Services (CA DCSS) and Imperial County DCSS signed a memorandum of understanding with Mexico’s Baja Norte California child support agency (Sistema de Desarrollo Integral para la Familia Baja California) so child support applications could pass directly between the two agencies rather than go through the Federal Central Authority in Mexico City. This reduced the average number of days from case opening to order establishment between the two neighbors from 196 days to less than 60 — a significant improvement!

2016: Agreement and training
Imperial County & state DCSS extended the cooperation with Baja Norte by signing an interagency agreement with the supreme court of Baja California (Poder Judicial del Estado de Baja California). It improved direct communication between the Baja California and California child support agencies, and streamlined processes for establishing and enforcing orders, which helped families on both sides of the border. Now, judicial officers and chief justices of several other Mexican states are looking at creating similar agreements.

Later in the year, Imperial County DCSS Director Liza Barraza, Deputy Director Guillermo Fernandez, and I spent three days training judicial officers and state prosecutors for child support agencies from each Mexican state as well as all family court magistrates. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also set up a webcast to broadcast the training to all 50 Mexican consulates in the United States and the 32 regional offices of the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We covered the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act 1996 (UIFSA), the UIFSA 2008 alignment, and their alignment with Mexican law. The trainings provided us a great way to share knowledge and build our relationship.

2017: Payment upgrades
In February, California DCSS sent 395 electronic payment cards to families in Mexico. Previously, these families received paper checks, which meant they often had to wait a long time to receive payments and frequently had to pay exorbitant check-cashing fees. CA DCSS worked closely with the Mexican consulates to deliver the cards to the local Mexican government agencies called Delegaciones so they could help families activate their cards.

California and Mexico share a border, but we have the ability to erase the barriers that those borders can create in government processes. We look forward to further cooperation with Mexico, and we will continue to create innovative practices for all intergovernmental cases. Our goal is to help every family in our caseload, regardless of where in the world they reside.