Like most good dads who are away from home, Jonathan Maldonado tried phoning his daughter on her birthday in June.
But hearing his 2-year-old’s adoring voice wasn’t going to happen.
Not just because the Bronx dad has been in Iraq with the 3rd Armored Cavalry fighting America’s enemies since late last year. Rather, he was knee-deep in a quagmire with the Administration for Children Services.
Maldonado’s problems began with his custody battle with estranged wife Elsa Ruiz, 22, over their two children, son Nehemiah, 3, and daughter Ilianis, 2.
In August 2007, Ruiz retained custody of the kids because Maldonado – then stationed at Fort Hood, Texas – was designated an absent parent during a Bronx Family Court custody petition.
“They claimed he had no rights to the children because he was not in the picture,” said Jackie Lugo, 41, the soldier’s mother.
The dad’s problems worsened when Ruiz eventually yielded control of the kids to an ACS foster parent while he was stationed in Iraq, family sources said.
Since then, Maldonado said, an ACS agent told his family that he had “no right to know” where his children were and that the ACS repeatedly ignored his anguished calls from overseas.
The ACS said it cannot, by law, comment on the specifics of the case.
Rachel Natelson, Maldonado’s lawyer with the Urban Justice Center, complains that a soldier’s rights are less than even those of a convict.
She said that in theory, the ACS should be obligated to allow those caught in the same situation as Maldonado to participate by phone in custody issues, something routinely granted incarcerated parents.
“If the agency has that policy [for the incarcerated], shouldn’t they have it to assist parents overseas in the military?” she said.
Fortunately, the foster mother did eventually notify Maldonado’s mother that she had been awarded the children. The foster parent even gave Lugo her phone number to pass to Maldonado, who immediately called and talked to his children.
But Maldonado’s mother said that as recently as July 21, a supervisor at a foster-care agency still tried to prevent her from taking photos of the children so that she could e-mail them to their dad.
Lugo said she was taking snapshots of the kids, intended for Maldonado, on the premises of the Harlem Dowling-West Side Center, which works with the ACS to oversee foster kids, when a site supervisor tried stopping her.
Lugo said the supervisor told her she was doing so based on a standing request from Ruiz.
It was not until after The Post began making queries that the ACS arranged for Lugo to schedule a photo-taking visit with the children and to get a status report on the kids’ well-being.
ACS spokeswoman Sharman Stein said the agency’s policy is to ensure the soldier “is in touch with his kids.”
“If he’s had troubles, it’s inadvertent,” Stein said. “It’s clear he wants to be involved, [and] we want him in the loop.”
Maldonado, who will be in the Army until at least 2010, hopes to rotate to Japan at some point and give Uncle Sam another four years.
“I’m planning to re-enlist,” he wrote. “But not before I get my kids.”
Additional reporting by Douglas Montero