Police Found a Blunt in Their Car. So They Seized Their Kids.

Last month, Bianca Clayborne and Deonte Williams were driving through rural Tennessee with their five young children when they were pulled over. When police found 5 grams of marijuana in the car, Williams was arrested and the five children were seized by local child protective services. One month later, the couple is still fighting to regain custody of their children.

According to the Tennessee Lookout, on February 17, Clayborne and Williams were driving from their home outside Atlanta to a family funeral in Illinois when police pulled them over. The couple was reportedly pulled over for “dark tint” on their windows and “traveling in the left lane while not actively passing.” The couple says that when they pulled off the highway and stopped at a nearby gas station, police ordered Williams out of the car and placed him in the back of a police cruiser, while Clayborne and the children—all under 7 years old, including an infant—were escorted inside the gas station. The couple says that officers began aggressively searching the vehicle, and a dog was brought in to sniff their possessions.

“My son was terrified,” Clayborne told the Lookout. “He said this was just like TV; this was like TV. I was just holding him by his face and I’m just like ‘don’t think like that, don’t think like that. It’s going to be ok, it’s going to be ok.'” Soon, police found a blunt in the car, leading police to arrest Williams.

Clayborne says she hoped to quickly bail Williams out and continue on their trip, but once she arrived in the parking lot of the Coffee County Criminal Justice Center, where Williams was taken, she says she was approached by several caseworkers from the Department of Children’s Services (DCS), who told her they would be taking custody of her children.

“Then my baby started crying so I reached for my son, and as I’m reaching, a man held me and told me, ‘don’t touch him. He’s getting taken away from you,'” Clayborne told the Lookout “I just sat there cr