President Donald Trump‘s administration is under fire after three American children were removed from the United States.
Government officials maintained that the children were not forcibly removed but accompanied their undocumented mothers, who had been deported.
Newsweek has contacted the U.S. State Department for comment via contact form outside normal office hours.
Why It Matters
The Trump administration has been accused of disregarding due process protections, especially for vulnerable groups, such as the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. While the administration has consistently pursued a hard-line approach to immigration enforcement, cases like this highlight complex questions about the balance between immigration enforcement and humane policies.
An AP-NORC poll conducted from April 17 to 21 among 1,260 adults found that 53 percent disapproved of Trump’s immigration policy. Similarly, an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, conducted from April 18 to 22, showed that more Americans disapproved (53 percent) than approved (46 percent) of the president’s handling of immigration.
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What To Know
Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected claims that three American children—all under the age of 10, including one with Stage IV cancer—were deported without due process, calling the accusations “misleading” on NBC‘s Meet the Press.
Border czar Tom Homan said on Sunday that the Trump administration did not deport American children to Honduras, adding that the children were sent to the Central American country because their mothers—who had been deported—chose to bring them along.
“No U.S. citizen child was deported,” Homan said. “Deported means ordered by an immigration judge.”
Court documents show that a 2-year-old U.S. citizen, identified as “V.M.L.,” was deported to Honduras on Friday alongside her Honduran-born mother and sister after being detained earlier in the week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
In a court filing, Judge Terry Doughty said there was “strong suspicion” that the child had been deported “without any meaningful process.”
According to the filings, the child—born in New Orleans in 2023, as evidenced by a redacted U.S. birth certificate submitted to the court—had accompanied her mother and sister to a routine immigration check-in at ICE’s New Orleans office on Tuesday, where all three were detained and slated for deportation.
After learning that his family had been detained, V.M.L.’s father, through his lawyer, notified ICE that his daughter was a U.S. citizen and could not legally be deported.
“Around 7:30 p.m. the same day, V.M.L.’s father received a call from an ICE officer, who spoke to him for about a minute,” a court filing said. “The officer said that V.M.L.’s mother was there, and that they did not have much time to speak to each other and that they were going to deport his partner and daughters.”
In an attempt to stop the deportation of his two daughters, the father filed a petition on Tuesday for a temporary transfer of legal custody, which under Louisiana law would grant custody to his sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen living in Baton Rouge.
Justice Department attorneys argued that it was in the child’s best interest to remain in her mother’s legal custody and suggested the child could return, writing, “V.M.L. is not prohibited from entering the United States.”
Trump administration officials told the court that the mother had informed ICE agents that she wanted to bring V.M.L. with her to Honduras, providing a handwritten note in Spanish that they said confirmed her wishes.
What People Are Saying
A senior Department of Homeland Security official told Newsweek: “The parent made the decision to take the child with them to Honduras. It is common that parents want to be removed with their children. Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with someone the parent designates. In this case, the parent stated they wanted to be removed with the children.”
They added: “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.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Meet the Press: “That’s a misleading headline. Three U.S. citizens—ages 4, 7 and 2—were not deported. Their mothers, who were illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers. Those children are U.S. citizens. They can come back into the United States if their father or someone here wants to assume them. … You guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the 2-year-old and threw them on an airplane. That’s misleading. That’s just not true. …
“If someone’s in this country unlawfully, illegally, that person gets deported. If that person is with a 2-year-old child or has a 2-year-old child and says, ‘I want to take my child with me,’ then you have two choices: You can say, ‘Yes, of course, you can take your child whether they’re a citizen or not because it’s your child,’ or you can say, ‘Yes, you can go, but your child must stay behind.’ Then your headlines would read, ‘U.S. holding hostage 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 7 -year-old while mother deported.'”
Erin Hebert, a senior associate at Ware Immigration, said in a news release: “Deporting U.S. citizen children is illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral. The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable, and every official responsible for it should be held accountable.”
Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney and law professor at Emory University, told The Washington Post: “Who paid for the ticket? It is clear that the U.S. government paid for this ticket—that means these children were deported. Whether they had [due] process or not, whether ICE appropriately followed the rules or not, these children were deported. The question you have to ask yourself is: What’s stopping this from happening to me and my kids?”
What Happens Next
The father of the 2-year-old is pursuing legal action to bring his daughter back to the U.S.