As the Trump administration continues to fend off criticism of its haphazard mass deportation efforts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday pushed back on reports that three young children who are U.S. citizens had been removed from the country, saying they simply “went with their mothers,” who were undocumented.
Lawyers for the families, however, have said the mothers were given no options and were coerced into stating they would take their children with them.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed two families to Honduras on Friday morning, including two mothers and their U.S. citizen children, ages 2, 4 and 7, the American Civil Liberties Union, which is also helping with the cases, said in a release that night. The 4-year-old has a rare form of metastatic cancer and was removed “without medication or the ability to consult with their treating physicians,” according to the ACLU. They are the second known child with cancer who has been removed from the country; the first was a 10-year-old with brain cancer who also has U.S. citizenship.
Asked about the families in an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Rubio called it “misleading” to state that U.S. citizens were removed, saying, “Their mothers, who were illegally in this country, were deported; the children went with their mothers.”
Rubio said those children “can come back” to the U.S. if their fathers or someone else is willing to assume responsibility for them. Rubio said the parents in these particular cases had decided that the children should go with their mothers.
But attorneys for both families have disputed that claim. Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project who represents the 2-year-old, told MSNBC on Monday that the family encountered “shocking indifference” from ICE officers when the parents wanted to communicate with each other. Willis said that the parents spoke very briefly on the phone but that an ICE officer ended the call as the father, who is in the U.S., was relaying a phone number for their attorneys.
The child’s attorneys also filed a petition in court on Thursday before the mother and the children were removed, stating that the toddler’s father was allowed “less than a minute” to speak with the mother on the phone.
Lawyers for the government have pointed to a letter from the mother in which she says she will take her daughter with her to Honduras, NBC News reported. But Willis said that the letter was “not a statement of desire” and that the mother was told to write it.
“She was never provided an opportunity to make a different choice,” Willis told MSNBC. “This was the choice that was given to her, the only option available to her, and she never had an opportunity to speak with a lawyer or to speak with the child’s father to make any other different decision.” A federal judge in Louisiana has set a hearing for May 16 over what he said was a “strong suspicion” that the Trump administration had sent the 2-year-old citizen out of the country “with no meaningful process.” A second family faced a similar scenario, according to their lawyer. Erin Hebert, who is representing the mother of the 7-year-old and the 4-year-old with cancer, told Rolling Stone that ICE did not give the mother any options or ability to make arrangements for her children when agents informed her that she was being deported. “She never signed anything. She never gave them permission,” Hebert said. “She never indicated that she wanted them to come with her.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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