Three children, who have U.S. citizenship, were deported to Honduras with their mothers amid a broader effort by the Trump administration to curb immigration.
Two of the kids who were deported were aged four and seven and were sent on a flight to Honduras with their mother last week. It was the same day when another child, aged two, was sent to the Central American nation alongside her undocumented mother.
U.S. Citizen Children Deported
Lawyers for both families affected said that the mothers were not given a chance to leave their children in the United States before being deported. In the case of the two-year-old child, a Louisiana federal judge expressed concern that the administration sent them to Honduras against the wishes of the father, who is still in the United States.
Tom Homan, President Donald Trump's border czar, denied that any American child was deported to Honduras. Talking about the two-year-old child, he said that federal immigration agents let her mother choose whether to be deported with or without her child, according to the New York Times.
The three deported children are from two different families who were both living in Louisiana. The two-year-old child's mother is also pregnant while the four-year-old boy was revealed to have a rare form of late-stage cancer.
The lawyers for the families said that the boy had no access to his medications or his doctors while he was still in custody alongside his seven-year-old sister and mother. The situation comes as the Trump administration is ramping up its immigration enforcement efforts.
Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, said that attorneys were preparing a habeas corpus petition when the kids were deported on an ICE charter flight before it could be filed, NBC News reported.
The Trump Administration's Immigration Crackdown
Attorney Erin Hebert did not respond to multiple requests for comment as he is said to be representing the family of the four-year-old boy. Hebert called the deportation of U.S. children "illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral."
Advocates for the families who were deported argue that their removal from the United States underscores concerns about a lack of due process amid the Trump administration's immigration crackdown efforts.
Willis said that we are now seeing in real-time due process eroding, adding that it is a situation that is deeply concerning. Before the two-year-old child was deported, a judge set a hearing for May 16, noting that it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen, as per CNN.
