The Trump administration is coming under scrutiny for deporting several U.S. citizen children along with their foreign-born parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump officials have defended the move, saying the minors were not deported, rather the parents have elected to take them along rather than be separated from their children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But attorneys for the families involved in such cases say their clients were given little notice and forced to make split-second decisions about what to do with children born in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rep. Seth Magaziner\u2002<\/u><\/a>(D-R.I.), has been in contact with attorneys for several families, including a Honduran woman with two U.S. citizen children, including a 4-year-old with stage 4 cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt no time did the mother offer any consent. At no time did the mother sign anything. Also, the mother was not given the opportunity to speak with legal counsel, even though the lawyer was in the same building at the time,\u201d Magaziner told The Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s a specific set of protocols that ICE is supposed to follow any time they are preparing to remove someone who has a minor child, whether that child is a citizen or not, and that includes providing access to legal counsel, which was not done in any of these cases,\u201d he added, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n That woman, known by initials RMV, is not alone. Another Honduran mother, JLV, was deported to Honduras<\/u><\/a> with her 2-year-old U.S. citizen child as the father was preparing custody documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then there\u2019s the case of two Mexican parents living in Texas who were deported along with five of their six children after being stopped at a border checkpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The family was en route to Houston for emergency treatment for their 10-year-old, U.S. citizen daughter who had recently had a brain tumor removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Hernandez family, using a pseudonym to protect their privacy, pleaded while in custody for staff to look at documentation from the hospital requesting permission to travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, they spent the night in custody before being taken to a bridge and turned over to Mexican authorities in an area rife with kidnappings. The family has since gone into hiding in rural Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Danny Woodward, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project who is working on the Hernandez family\u2019s case, said the mixed status family has multiple children who were born in the U.S., as well as one born in Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe parents were not offered any sort of meaningful choice about what to do with their daughter or any of their U.S. citizen kids. CBP will repeatedly say, \u2018Oh, the parents were all given the choice about what to have happen.\u2019 But what happened in this case is that the parents were repeatedly pressured to sign deportation papers and basically said, \u2018Your two options are to take your children back to Mexico, all of them, or hand them over to government custody and you will never see them again,\u2019\u201d he said of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents that dealt with the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s not a meaningful choice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rep. Adriano Espaillat\u2002<\/u><\/a>(D-N.Y.), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, met with the Hernandez family in Monterrey, Mexico, earlier this month. He said it\u2019s been disruptive for the family \u2014 the daughter isn\u2019t getting treatment, while the U.S. citizen children can\u2019t officially enroll in school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He\u2019s hoping to get passports for the U.S. citizen children and humanitarian parole for the parents and their one Mexican citizen child. That would allow the family to return to the U.S. so the daughter can continue to get medical care unavailable in Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe little girl is not able to get the treatment she needs to get to deal with her illness,\u201d Espaillat said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is happening more than we think it is happening, and that this mass deportation effort by the administration will now, now seems to be kicking in, and it\u2019s sort of like on steroids, right,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s happening to green card-holders and U.S. citizens, particularly children. So it\u2019s not just an undocumented issue \u2014 it\u2019s impacting everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sirine Shebaya, executive director for the National Immigration Project, which is representing both of the Honduran women who were deported with their children, said ICE agents in Louisiana did not follow established protocol for handling family situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shebaya said past administrations have not moved to deport the parent of a citizen child if they were not otherwise considered a public safety risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s a requirement that parents be given an opportunity to make decisions about what happens with their children, because, obviously, as a U.S. citizen, you have a right to be here. You are not able to be deported. And in this situation, neither of the moms was given an opportunity to make a decision about what happens with their kids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shebaya said the mothers should have been presented with forms, translated into their native language, as well as time to consult with an attorney and other family members, including to arrange the possibility of leaving the child with a designated custodian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, one was never informed her lawyer was trying to reach her and both were told their children would be removed with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe families in Louisiana were evidently and clearly not given any choice in the matter at all, and if they had been given a choice, there would have been documentation of a process and a conversation. It\u2019s also not possible to have the ability to make a choice in less than 24 hours, about two children, one of whom is extremely sick,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem framed the matter as an election of the parents, telling Magaziner and other lawmakers during questioning in earlier in May that \u201cwe do not deport U.S. citizens and have not deported U.S. citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump administration also lashed out this week following a report from The Washington Post<\/u><\/a> detailing the case of a 2-year-old born in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Brazilian parents without legal status in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The child, Emanuelly Borges Santos, is now left in bureaucratic limbo. U.S. immigration officials confiscated her parents\u2019 Brazilian travel documents, leaving them unable to secure Brazilian citizenship for their daughter at a consulate in South Florida. When she arrived on a deportation flight with her parents in Brazil, Borges Santos had only her U.S. travel documents \u2014 meaning she had to enter the country as a tourist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That status is set to expire in days, and Borges Santos has no simple way to gain citizenship in a country that, like the U.S., has birthright citizenship or requires foreign births to be registered at consulates abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe media is force-feeding the public false information that U.S. citizen children are being deported. This is FALSE and irresponsible,\u201d the Department of Homeland Security said in a tweet<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cParents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with someone the parent designates. Parents, who are here illegally, can take control of their departure through the CBP Home app. The United States is offering illegal aliens $1,000 and a free flight to self-deport now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But critics say removals amount to deportation and ignore the complexities faced by such families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Woodward said <\/strong>that the Hernandez family\u2019s son was out of town when the rest of the family was deported and remains in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe just lost his whole family. He\u2019s been separated from everybody,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n