World News | Lawyers: ICE Deports Immigrant Mother of Infant and Three Children Who Are US Citizens
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have in recent days deported the Cuban-born mother of a year-old girl -- separating them indefinitely -- and three children ages two, four and seven who are US citizens along with their Honduran-born mothers, their lawyers said on Saturday.
Harrisburg, Apr 27 (AP) Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have in recent days deported the Cuban-born mother of a year-old girl -- separating them indefinitely -- and three children ages two, four and seven who are US citizens along with their Honduran-born mothers, their lawyers said on Saturday.
The three cases raise questions about who is being deported, and why, and come amid a battle in federal courts over whether President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown has gone too far and too quickly at the expense of fundamental rights.
Lawyers in the cases described how the women were arrested at routine check-ins at ICE offices, given virtually no opportunity to speak with lawyers or their family members and then deported within three days or less.
The American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigration Project and several other allied groups said in a statement that the way ICE deported children who are US citizens and their mothers is a "shocking -- although increasingly common -- abuse of power".
Gracie Willis of the National Immigration Project said the mothers, at the very least, did not have a fair opportunity to decide whether they wanted the children to stay in the US.
The four-year-old -- who is suffering from a rare form of cancer -- and the seven-year-old were deported to Honduras within a day of being arrested with their mother, Willis said.
In the case involving the two-year-old, a federal judge in Louisiana raised questions about the deportation of the girl, saying the government did not prove it had done so properly.
Lawyers for the girl's father insisted he wanted the girl to remain with him in the US, while ICE contended the mother had wanted the girl to be deported with her to Honduras, claims that weren't fully vetted by US District Judge Terry Doughty in Louisiana.
Doughty in a Friday order scheduled a hearing on May 16 "in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process", he wrote.
The Honduran-born mother -- who is pregnant -- was arrested on Tuesday on an outstanding deportation order along with the two-year-old girl and her 11-year-old Honduran-born sister during a check-in appointment at an ICE office in New Orleans, lawyers said. The family lived in Baton Rouge.
Doughty called government lawyers on Friday to speak to the woman while she was in the air on a deportation plane, only to be called back less than an hour later and told that a conversation was impossible because she "had just been released in Honduras".
In a Thursday court filing, lawyers for the father said ICE indicated that it was holding the two-year-old girl in a bid to induce the father to turn himself in. His lawyers did not describe his immigration status but said he has legally delegated the custody of his daughters to his sister-in-law, a US citizen who also lives in Baton Rouge.
Cuban-born woman is deported, leaving behind child and husband
In Florida, meanwhile, a Cuban-born woman who is the mother of a one-year-old girl and the wife of a US citizen was detained at a scheduled check-in appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Tampa, her lawyer said on Saturday.
Heidy Sanchez was held without any communication and flown to Cuba two days later. She is still breastfeeding her daughter, who suffers from seizures, her lawyer, Claudia Canizares, said.
Canizares said she tried to file paperwork with ICE to contest the deportation on Thursday morning but ICE refused to accept it, saying Sanchez was already gone, although Canizares said she doesn't think that was true.
Canizares said she told ICE that she was planning to reopen Sanchez's case to help her remain in the US legally but ICE told her that Sanchez can pursue the case while she's in Cuba.
"I think they're following orders that they need to remove a certain amount of people by day and they don't care, honestly," Canizares said.
Sanchez is not a criminal and has a strong case on humanitarian grounds for allowing her to stay in the US, Canizares said, but ICE isn't taking that into consideration when it has to meet what the lawyer said were deportation benchmarks.
Sanchez had an outstanding deportation order stemming from a missed hearing in 2019, for which she was detained for nine months, Canizares said. Cuba apparently refused to accept Sanchez back at the time, so Sanchez was released in 2020 and ordered to maintain a regular schedule of check-ins with ICE, Canizares said. (AP)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)