The news that three U.S. citizen children were illegally removed from Louisiana and flown to Honduras last Friday has swept the nation. President Donald Trump’s administration continues to double down, insisting that the two mothers wanted to take their children with them, despite the deported families’ legal counsel vehemently denying this claim.
As the Trump administration works to contain the backlash associated with deporting American children, one of whom has metastatic cancer, the Department of Homeland Security issued a supposed “Fact Check” document identifying the mothers who were deported.
Trump officials have also claimed the mothers presented their children’s passports in order to voluntarily remove them from the country. However, attorneys for the families say that’s not what happened; their clients were told to bring their kids’ passports in to photocopy them from their files.
The attorneys say the administration’s actions are putting the families’ lives at risk.
“By naming these families publicly, DHS isn’t just trying to deflect rightful blame – it’s exposing these families to real danger,” Mich Gonzalez, one of the family’s attorneys, tells Rolling Stone.
In a press release issued Wednesday morning, the National Immigration Project of National Lawyers Guild stated, “This is not just a violation of trust; it is a reckless act that puts real lives at risk and underlines the lack of concern for the safety and welfare of these children and their families…. The mothers were forcibly deported, and their U.S. citizen children were taken with them under duress. No safe or practical alternative was provided to allow the children to remain in their country of birth.”
Gonzalez, who co-founded Sanctuary of the South, says the families are “still navigating how to seek medical care to address the impacts to their physical and mental health following this ordeal.” In addition to one of the mother’s seeking perinatal care and one of the children’s treatment for cancer, Gonzalez says the impact of the event itself and the ensuing aftermath has the families fearing for their safety.
“Now the government has put their lives at even greater risk by releasing their full name and information yesterday,” Gonzalez says.
Attorney Gracie Willis from the National Immigration Project of National Lawyers Guild represents the two-year-old U.S. citizen child of the pregnant mother who was deported, who is known in court papers as VML.
Willis adds that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is part of DHS, “is hiding behind policies that it’s clear they didn’t follow here, and trying to villainize these mothers doesn’t change that.”
On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s border czar Tom Homan went on talk shows to claim accounts of the American kids’ deportation are misleading. Yesterday, the DHS weighed in.
“ICE did NOT deport U.S. citizen children,” DHS posted on X. “The mother made the determination to take her children with her back to Honduras. We take our responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to ensure that children are safe and protected.”
The attorneys for the two families dispute the government’s claims.
One of the American children, a 4-year-old, who was removed from the country was undergoing active treatment for metastatic cancer, which attorneys say ICE officials knew about ahead of time. (This is at least the second U.S. citizen child with cancer whom Trump has deported.)
New Orleans attorney Erin Hebert, from Ware Immigration Law, said the child’s mother was told to bring him and his seven-year-old sister to a check-in in order to copy their passports. The children were dressed in their school uniforms and expected to return to class after what they thought would be a routine appointment. Instead, ICE officials refused to let Hebert come in with the family.
“They refused to allow me to go back into the appointment,” Hebert tells Rolling Stone. “I want to be clear — they sequestered her from me.”
Hebert said she sat in the waiting room until somebody came out and told her all three of them had been detained. “When I demanded information about where they’d been taken, where they were going, they refused to tell me,” she says. Hebert sprung into action to try and file court motions to delay the deportation but by the next morning, the family was already in Honduras. The children left in their school uniforms, without any of their belongings. The child with cancer did not have his medication with him.
“This is a U.S. citizen child with a serious medical condition,” says Hebert. “I can’t think of a more vulnerable position to be in than that child. I am not easily shocked by the injustices that I have seen in my career, but this shocked me.”
The other mother who was deported is currently pregnant. She brought her two-year-old U.S. citizen daughter known as VML, and her older sibling, with her to what she thought was a routine check-in on April 22. Three days later, all three of them were on a plane to Honduras, landing before a judge could hear the court case attempting to delay their removal. In both situations, attorneys say they were working on alternate lawful custodians to take care of the children.
Yesterday, a federal judge in Louisiana, Terry Doughty, issued an order clarifying the scope of an upcoming hearing on May 16 where he will determine whether VML’s mother consented to her daughter’s removal. In the order, it’s revealed that the case was assigned to him at 8:14AM on April 25, and the court immediately began considering the petition. A minute later, the plane carrying VML from Alexandria, Louisiana, reached El Paso, preparing for its final leg to Honduras.
“The court sought to call VML’s mother to have her attest that she consented to her child being removed with her,” wrote Doughty. “That didn’t happen. Now we are here.”
Gonzalez says that, like Hebert, he and Willis have worked together on multiple horrific cases, but this one is particularly awful.
“This is one that will stay with me for the rest of my life,” says Gonzalez, who recalls watching the flight leave on a flight tracking app. “It was really hard to see in real time that plane moving across my phone, leaving this country with those babies on it, knowing full well that their mothers were coerced into being deported with them and were not given an opportunity to speak to their legal counsel.”
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