A mother deported to Honduras was given less than two minutes by immigration agents to speak with her partner about the fate of their children, including a 2-year-old U.S. citizen.
Grace Willis, a lawyer for the 2-year-old, told MSNBC on Monday that the mother was arrested along with her two children last week during a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Willis said ICE “denied everybody” the ability to contact the mother for days after the arrest. She was eventually allowed to speak on the phone with her partner—but only for two minutes.
“They were asserting the child’s U.S. citizenship on speaker phone with the ICE officer, who was in the room with the mother,” Willis said. “As soon as the father started providing the phone number for an attorney, the ICE officer hung up the phone. That was the last time they spoke to each other until the mother landed in Honduras.”
The mother had been checking in regularly with ICE for years because of an outstanding deportation order, Willis said.
On April 22nd, however, she was detained with her 2-year-old and an older child. All three of them were later taken to Honduras, even though the mother wanted the younger child to stay in the U.S.
The Trump administration has insisted that the mother wanted her children to be brought to Honduras along with her, citing a letter she wrote by hand stating, “My child will come with me.”
Willis argued, however, that the mother was forced to write that letter.
“She was never provided an opportunity to make a different choice,” she said. “She never had an opportunity to speak with a lawyer or to speak with the child’s father to make any other different decision.”
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty has scheduled a hearing on the case for May 16th, “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
“The government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty wrote. “But the Court doesn’t know that.”
The revelations contradict Trump administration claims that the deportation of U.S. citizen children were made after their mothers requested the children to be taken with them.
In a separate incident last week, another mother was deported to Honduras along with her American citizen children aged 4 and 7, according to the National Immigration Project. The mother wanted both of her kids—including the younger one, who has cancer—to stay in the U.S.
Border czar Tom Homan has waved off concerns about the deportation of U.S. citizen children, arguing that “having a U.S. citizen child doesn’t make you immune from our laws of the country.” He told Face the Nation on Sunday: “American families get separated every day by law enforcement. Having a U.S. citizen child after you enter this country illegally is not a get out of jail free card.”
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