Trump Continues to Cleanse America of Immigrants and Trample Due Process for All
Civil and immigrant rights advocates revealed the shocking truth that the Trump administration disappeared three U.S. citizen children and their families last Friday – including a four-year-old child with stage four cancer. Think about that: U.S. citizen children, including a four-year-old child with cancer. We should all be horrified, disgusted – and outraged.
Southeast Dignity not Detention Coalition, National Immigration Project, Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants, Ware Immigration, Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, Sanctuary of the South, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its Louisiana affiliate said that the sick U.S. citizen child was illegally removed “without medication or the ability to consult with their treating physicians–despite ICE being notified in advance of the child’s urgent medical needs.”
Children. Our children. US citizens. Don’t say it’s ok to deny any person a lawyer and a chance to see a judge. Believe that violating the rights of anyone endangers everyone! www.aclu.org/press-releas…
— Maya Wiley (@maya4rights.bsky.social) 2025-04-26T23:18:00.902Z
We have already seen the Trump administration trample on the due process rights of immigrant contributors like Maryland dad Kilmar Abrego García. But not even U.S. citizen children appear to be immune – and that’s according to a federal judge appointed by Trump.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who was confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana by a unanimous vote under Trump’s first administration, said that one of the three U.S. citizen children – a two-year-old child identified in court documents as “V.M.L.” – was kicked out of her own country “with no meaningful process.” This mother was explicitly instructed to bring her U.S. citizen child with her to her scheduled check-in with ICE, NBC News reports. In other words, targeting a family that was simply trying to follow the rules. How does that make any one of us safer?
“It is sickening that children are being deported, U.S. citizens are being deported, which we know is illegal, and which we know is also just inhumane,” responded Rep. Robert Garcia (CA-42) to the breaking news. “The idea that they are taking these children, there’s been no process from what I can see from the reports, essentially these agents are trying to rush through the process, trying to get people, ship them out of this country as fast as possible, giving them no real chance to go through the courts or through the process. And now we are deporting U.S. citizens, let alone children, to other countries, to Honduras, to other places.”
BREAKING: The ACLU says the Trump administration has deported three U.S. citizen children.
— MaddowBlog (@maddowblog.msnbc.com) 2025-04-26T02:04:04.451Z
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and “border czar” Tom Homan are among Trump administration officials now publicly defending these indefensible actions, by claiming that the mothers chose to take their American children with them, effectively blaming them for wrongfully deporting their own children. But Rolling Stone reports that “attorneys for the families say that’s a lie.” The mothers, advocates say, were coerced into taking them.
“Legal counsel for the two Louisiana families tells Rolling Stone that both mothers say they were not given the option of keeping their U.S. citizen children in the country. They say the mothers were told their children were being deported alongside them, despite their citizenship status and even though both families had lawful custodians willing to take custody of the children.” In their joint statement, civil and immigrant rights advocates said that immigration officials iced families out of all communications with attorneys and family members, including giving one mother less than two minutes to coordinate with a caretaker, and the mother of the sick U.S. citizen child no chance at all to coordinate with a caretaker despite their illness.
“The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Judge Doughty wrote regarding the wrongfully removed two-year-old U.S. citizen child. “But the Court doesn’t know that” (emphasis Judge Doughty’s).
“These actions stand in direct violation of ICE’s own written and informal directives, which mandate coordination for the care of minor children with willing caretakers–regardless of immigration status–when deportations are being carried out,” the civil and immigrant rights organizations said in their joint statement.
Nor is this even the first time that the Trump administration has exiled a sick U.S. citizen child. Last month, the administration removed a U.S. citizen child who was recovering from brain cancer to Mexico with her family, NBC News reported. The family was rushing to an emergency medical check-up in Houston when they were held at an immigration checkpoint. “Before the family was removed from the U.S., the girl was routinely checking in with doctors monitoring her recovery, attending rehabilitation therapies and taking medication to prevent convulsions.”
Some of Trump’s cruelest acts from his first administration were directed at children. Not only is Stephen Miller still attacking children, he’s basically in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. Just don’t ask him what the Department of Homeland Security is actually doing or he’ll melt down, like when a reporter asked him if kicking American children out of their own country is the best use of our resources (it is not):
Reporter presses Stephen Miller: “You guys ran on targeting violent criminals, worst of the worst. Is it the best use of the administration’s resources to go after mom’s of young kids?”
— Vince D. Monroy (@vincedmonroy.bsky.social) 2025-04-28T19:51:26.105Z
“Both mothers have clearly communicated that they felt under extreme duress in this situation, that ICE essentially coerced them into accepting this deportation with their children,” Sanctuary of the South’s Mich Gonzalez, who represents one of the deported moms, told Rolling Stone. “Both have stated that ICE repeatedly denied their requests, for a phone call, for a legal process, requests to speak to a judge, request to speak to anyone via phone call, including family members or potentially lawyers.” And, terrorizing or taking entire families regardless of legal status has become a pattern. In Oklahoma, a family was traumatized after ICE targeted the wrong house, KFOR reports. “We just moved here from Maryland,” the mother said she told agents. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.” But she said “the agents didn’t care.”
And in New York’s Sackets Harbor – Homan’s hometown – ICE swept up a dairy worker and her three children as part of an investigation that didn’t even involve her in the first place. After days in detention and massive pushback from the local community, the family was finally released.
Disappearing mothers and toddlers, denying them access to lawyers, deporting them without due process – this is not what a democracy does to its citizens and families and to their kids.
— Vanessa Cardenas (@vcardenas.bsky.social) 2025-04-26T01:48:54.481Z
“This is an issue that’s not just about immigration, it’s about due process in this country, it’s about the Constitution, it’s about the kind of country that we are going to be,” Rep. Garcia continued on MSNBC, “and how we’re gonna treat the people that are here, whether there are citizens, or they are coming to our country seeking help.” Last year, we warned that U.S. citizenship would be no guarantee of protection for many people of color if Trump returned to power. Not only has that prediction tragically played out during his first 100 days of chaos and lawlessness, it’s worse than we imagined. Now without their medication and access to their treating physicians, this cancer patient’s life is at risk due to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant obsessions.
