AUSTIN -- In a debate that is likely to linger for years, lawyers are arguing whether the state of Texas went too far in removing all children, down to infants, from a polygamist retreat in West Texas.

Lawyers for the mothers say the courts have failed to limit an overly aggressive government, especially when it came to separating young children from their mothers.

Robert Doggett of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which represents about 50 of the mothers in the polygamist sect, told the Austin American-Statesman that such young children are not in immediate danger of being indoctrinated to believe in forcing underage girls to have sex with older men in “celestial” marriages.

“How in the world could the judge have found imminent risk of physical harm?” Doggett said. “Courts are supposed to be a check on the government. That system has totally broken down.”

Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Mormon splinter group that operated the ranch, said the state has said, “if you’re a member of this religious group, then you’re not allowed to have children.”

But some child advocates and family-law experts side with a West Texas judge who ruled that the environment at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch was unsafe for anyone under 18 because children were groomed to become victims or abusers.

“No religious belief held by an adult justifies any kind of child abuse. No religious belief allows an adult to have sex with an underage girl,” said Scott McCown, a former district court judge.

McCown said leaving some children behind means they could be “whisked out of the state, which both puts them at risk potentially and impedes an investigation.”

Austin lawyer Dicky Grigg, who represents a 2-year-old girl from the ranch who is now in foster care, said he understood how the state and judge could find that the ranch was a dangerous place.

“Underage girls are being sexually molested,” he said. “There was certainly evidence introduced presenting that.”

But Grigg added that for most of the children there was no evidence of an immediate threat of physical or sexual abuse.

Initially, child-welfare investigators took 18 girls, ranging from 6 months to 17 years, into emergency state custody on April 4, the second day of the raid of the ranch near Eldorado. But that set in motion a series of events that culminated in state District Judge Barbara Walther ordering all 462 children removed from the retreat.

The judge modified her order last week to let children younger than 1 year to stay with their mothers in shelters.

A spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Darrell Azar, said investigators found evidence of physical and emotional abuse among the children at the Yearning for Zion ranch near Eldorado.

“We are confident that we found an overwhelming amount of evidence showing not only specific abuse against specific children, but a pattern of abuse that endangered them all,” Azar said.  “There was no way to limit the risk in that environment. The only choice was to remove them.”