Two women who were deported to Honduras alongside their US citizen children were held in “complete isolation” and denied any opportunity to coordinate the care and custody of their children before being put on a flight, according to one of the lawyers representing them.
The mothers were unable to contact attorneys or loved ones, and were not allowed the option to transfer the custody of their citizen children to another parent or caregiver, said Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project who is representing one of the families and coordinating with the team representing the other family.
“Here we had moms held completely in isolation, being told what was happening to their children. They didn’t have an opportunity to talk this through, to weigh the pros and cons of taking or leaving their children in the US,” Willis said.
One of the mothers, who was deported with her seven-year-old and her four-year-old, both of whom are citizens, was unable to access medications and care for her youngest, who has a rare form of late-stage cancer.
Another woman, who is pregnant, was put on a plane to Honduras along with her 11-year-old and two-year-old daughters, even as the children’s father and a caretaker designated by the family were desperately trying to contact them.
“She’s in the early stages of a pregnancy and has undergone unimaginable stress,” said Willis. “So she’s trying to ensure her and that unborn child’s safety and health, while also processing and working through what they’ve all been through.”
Both families were detained at regular check-in appointments with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in New Orleans, according to lawyers, and then taken hours away from the city and prohibited from communicating with family members.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of immigrant parents in similar situations, who have both a deportation order and US citizen children, have to choose whether to leave their kids in the US under the care of another family member or guardian, or surrender them to Child Protective Services.
“No parent would want to be in that situation,” Willis said. “And we don’t bring any judgment against any decision that a parent makes.”
But the mothers who were rushed on to deportation flights with their children last week, in high-profile cases that have drawn widespread condemnation from civil rights groups and lawmakers, were not empowered to make any real choices for their families, Willis said.
“There were no real decisions being made here, especially when those parents were not able to communicate with other available caregivers,” she added.
After lawyers for VML, the two-year-old who is identified in court documents by only her initials, filed an emergency motion to prevent the US citizen toddler’s deportation, a federal district judge raised concerns that he had a “strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process”.
A hearing in VML’s case has been scheduled for 18 May. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been claiming that the family’s cases were handled legally and with due process.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said: “The children aren’t deported. The mother chose to take the children with her.”
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, echoed Homan, saying: “I imagine those three US citizen children have fathers here in the United States. They can stay with their father. That’s up to their family to decide where the children go.”
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