US citizen children, undocumented mothers signify wider deportation efforts

A series of recent federal immigration arrests and deportations, including of young children who are U.S. citizens, has thrust the wide-ranging nature of the Trump administration’s immigration policies into the spotlight. While the administration said early on that deporting violent criminals and gang members living in the U.S. illegally would be its priority, so too did White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt argue that anyone living in the country illegally is a criminal, effectively widening the scope of deportation efforts.

“If you are an individual, a foreign national, who illegally enters the United States of America, you are by definition a criminal,” Leavitt said back in January.

This, coupled with the administration’s attempts to end birthright citizenship, means U.S. children and their mothers “who had lived in the United States for years and had deep ties to their communities,” as the American Civil Liberties Union describes it, are now being systematically removed from the country.

Within the last week, federal immigration authorities have either detained or deported several women and children, including the wife of an active-duty Coast Guardsman, the mother of a 1-year-old girl, and three U.S. citizen children ages 2, 4 and 7, as well as their mothers who lack proper documentation to live in the country.

US Coast Guardsman’s spouse detained

On Thursday, April 24, an unidentified woman married to an active-duty Coast Guardsman was arrested in the residential area of the U.S. Naval Air Station at Key West, Florida, according to the Associated Press. She was reportedly flagged during a routine security check when attempting to get her access pass for the military installation because she had overstayed a work visa that expired around 2017. A few years after that, she was marked for removal from the U.S. However, she married the Coast Guardsman earlier this year.  

“The spouse is not a member of the Coast Guard and was detained by Homeland Security Investigations [HIS] pursuant to a lawful removal order,” Coast Guard spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Steve Roth said in a statement. “The Coast Guard works closely with HSI and others to enforce federal laws, including on immigration.”

The Coast Guard referred the AP’s questions regarding the woman’s name, immigration status, and charges to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). However, ICE did not respond to the AP’s request for comment on Saturday, April 26. An official who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity said they believe the woman is still being detained.

Deportations at ICE appointments

Meanwhile, ICE also arrested and deported a Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old, separating the two indefinitely, as well as three children ages 2, 4 and 7, along with their mothers, who were born in Honduras. All of the children are U.S. citizens, according to their lawyers.

The 4-year-old is currently battling a rare form of cancer and was deported to Honduras alongside the 7-year-old within a day of being arrested with their mother, Gracie Willis of the National Immigration Project told the Associated Press.

The AP reports that their lawyers say the women and children were arrested during routine check-ins at ICE offices. They were also deported within three days, during which time they were held “incommunicado,” with ICE “refusing or failing to respond to multiple attempts by attorneys and family members to contact them,” according to the ACLU.

“We have no idea what ICE was telling them, and in this case what has come to light is that ICE didn’t give them another alternative,” Willis said of the recent deportations. “They didn’t gave them a choice, that these mothers only had the option to take their children with them despite loving caregivers being available in the United States to keep them here.”

Hearing scheduled in 2-year-old US citizen’s case

Similarly, a federal judge in Louisiana, Terry Doughty, questioned the case of a 2-year-old girl with U.S. citizenship who was deported alongside her pregnant mother and 11-year-old sister, both of whom lack proper documentation to legally reside in the U.S. The family lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was arrested during a check-in appointment at an ICE office in New Orleans, according to their lawyers.

Doughty is arguing that the government failed to follow proper protocols when deporting the 2-year-old girl, identified in court documents as V.M.L, given her status as a U.S. citizen. The judge scheduled a hearing for May 16, “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

That hearing will focus on ICE’s claim that the girl’s mother wanted them to be deported to Honduras together, though the girl’s father says he wanted her to remain in the U.S.

Lawyers for the Department of Justice are arguing that the deportation was legal because the girl was in her mother’s custody, adding that such an arrangement is in the girl’s best interest. Furthermore, the DOJ claims that V.M.L is not suffering irreparable harm because she is a U.S. citizen and can reenter the country whenever she wants.

Doughty called government lawyers on Friday, April 26, and asked to speak with the woman so that he could establish whether V.M.L. was supposed to travel to Honduras or stay in the U.S. However, his call was returned less than an hour later, and he was told the woman “had just been released in Honduras,” making a conversation impossible. The incident is reminiscent of the Trump administration’s failure to abide by a judge’s order requiring the return of a plane carrying deported Venezuelan men to El Salvador.

The family’s lawyers wrote in a court filing Thursday, April 25, that ICE indicated they were detaining the 2-year-old girl, hoping that the father would turn himself in. While his immigration status is unknown, the AP reports that his sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen also living in Baton Rouge, has legal custody of his daughters.

‘They don’t care, honestly’

Over in Florida, Heidy Sánchez, a Cuban woman married to a U.S. citizen, was detained at an ICE office in Tampa during a scheduled check-in. She was then denied communication while in custody and ultimately flown to Cuba two days later. Her 1-year-old daughter, who is still in the U.S., has to be breastfed and suffers from seizures, Sánchez’s lawyer, Claudia Cañizares, said.  

Cañizares also disputes ICE’s claim that her client had already been flown out of the country when she attempted to file paperwork on Thursday, challenging the deportation.

“I think they’re following orders that they need to remove a certain amount of people by day and they don’t care, honestly,” Cañizares said. Earlier this year, reports emerged suggesting that Trump wants between 1,200 and 1,500 ICE arrests per day.

Signing on to a statement from the ACLU, Teresa Reyes-Flores with the Southeast Dignity not Detention Coalition said, “ICE’s actions show a blatant violation of due process and basic human rights. The families were disappeared, cut off from their lawyers and loved ones, and rushed to be deported, stripping their parents of the chance to protect their U.S. citizen children.”