The mothers and their US citizen children deported by the Trump administration included a 2-year-old, 4-year-old, and 7-year-old. One of the children was being treated for metastatic cancer. Their attorneys are speaking out about the complete lack of due process in each of these cases.
In the first case, a 2-year-old was deported with the mother, while the second case involves a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old. The 4-year-old in this case was being treated for cancer and was deported without a chance to coordinate with the child’s physician or to obtain the medication the child is taking.
All were detained when the women attended routine meetings with officials in Louisiana as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, or ISAP, according to their attorneys and court records.
“We are seeing in real time due process eroded,” said Gracie Willis, a lawyer at the National Immigration Project, who represents the 2-year-old through a family friend acting as the petitioner in the case. “That is deeply concerning and these cases are an illustration of that.”
From reporting on CNN.com:
The judge said the mother was undocumented but set a hearing for May 16 regarding the child’s deportation, noting “It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen,” citing a 2012 deportation case.
The second case is a close echo: The mother was detained Thursday after she took her children to an ISAP check-in in Saint Rose, just outside New Orleans, according to her attorney, Erin Hebert. The mother, who has lived in south Louisiana for more than a decade but did not have lawful status, was asked to bring the two children and their passports to the appointment, Hebert told CNN Sunday.
On their arrival, however, Hebert said she was not allowed to accompany the family to the meeting. About 20 to 30 minutes later, Hebert was informed the family had been detained, but officials refused to tell her where they were taken.
Hebert later learned after speaking with her client, two ICE officers were waiting for the family at the appointment, she told CNN.
Hebert then went to ICE’s New Orleans field office, where she said she filed a stay of removal she had prepared in advance of her client’s meeting, hoping to keep them in the country. Over the course of the day, she repeatedly contacted the office to ask where they were being held but said she was not given a response.
Early Friday morning, the family was placed on a plane, Hebert said, and taken to Honduras.
Trump’s Border Czar, Tom Homan was on CBS over the weekend defending the deportations:
From reporting on BBC.com
On Friday, New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials deported the two mothers and three children aged two, four, and seven, to Honduras from Louisiana, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement.
The two families – including one pregnant mother – had lived in the US for years and were “deported from the U.S. under deeply troubling circumstances that raise serious due process concerns”, the ACLU said.
Speaking to reporters at a news conference on Monday morning, Homan said deporting families together was better than separating them.
“We’re keeping families together,” he said. “What we did was remove children with their mothers who requested the children depart with them. There’s a parental decision.”
Homan dismissed the use of the word “deported” to describe the removal of the children from the country.
“They weren’t deported. We don’t deport US citizens. Their parents made that decision, not the United States government,” he said.
Last week, a federal judge said he had a “strong suspicion” that one of the children deported to Honduras, a two-year-old citizen, – was sent away with “no meaningful process”.
The Louisiana-born child and her family members were apprehended during a routine appointment at a New Orleans immigration office on 22 April, according to court documents.
Homan, in an interview with CBS Face the Nation on Sunday, said “the judge was due process”, adding that the two-year-old’s mother “had due process at great taxpayer expense and was ordered by an immigration judge after those hearings, so she had due process.”
A hearing has been scheduled in the case for 19 May for the government to address whether the family was given due process.
The second family was detained on 24 April, when ICE refused to respond to their attorneys’ and family members’ requests to contact them, the ACLU said.
