ICE deports immigrant mother of an infant and 3 children who are US
citizens, lawyers say
[April 28, 2025]
By MARC LEVY
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have
in recent days deported the Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old girl —
separating them indefinitely — and three children ages 2, 4 and 7 who
are U.S. citizens along with their Honduran-born mothers, their lawyers
said Saturday.
The three cases raise questions about who is being deported, and why,
and come amid a battle in federal courts over whether President Donald
Trump's immigration crackdown has gone too far and too quickly at the
expense of fundamental rights.
Lawyers in the cases described how the women were arrested at routine
check-ins at ICE offices, given virtually no opportunity to speak with
lawyers or their family members and then deported within three days or
less.
The American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigration Project and
several other allied groups said in a statement that the way ICE
deported children who are U.S. citizens and their mothers is a “shocking
— although increasingly common — abuse of power.”
Gracie Willis of the National Immigration Project said the mothers, at
the very least, did not have a fair opportunity to decide whether they
wanted the children to stay in the United States.
“We have no idea what ICE was telling them, and in this case what has
come to light is that ICE didn’t give them another alternative,” Willis
said in an interview. “They didn’t gave them a choice, that these
mothers only had the option to take their children with them despite
loving caregivers being available in the United States to keep them
here.”
The 4-year-old — who is suffering from a rare form of cancer — and the
7-year-old were deported to Honduras within a day of being arrested with
their mother, Willis said.
In the case involving the 2-year-old, a federal judge in Louisiana
raised questions about the deportation of the girl, saying the
government did not prove it had done so properly.
Lawyers for the girl's father insisted he wanted the girl to remain with
him in the U.S., while ICE contended the mother had wanted the girl to
be deported with her to Honduras, claims that weren't fully vetted by
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Louisiana.
Doughty in a Friday order scheduled a hearing on May 16 “in the interest
of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a
U.S. citizen with no meaningful process," he wrote.
The Honduran-born mother — who is pregnant — was arrested Tuesday on an
outstanding deportation order along with the 2-year-old girl and her
11-year-old Honduran-born sister during a check-in appointment at an ICE
office in New Orleans, lawyers said. The family lived in Baton Rouge.
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A deportation officer with Enforcement and Removal Operations
in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's New York City field
office conducts a brief before an early morning operation, Tuesday,
Dec. 17, 2024, in the Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Julia
Demaree Nikhinson, File)
Doughty called government lawyers on Friday to speak to the woman
while she was in the air on a deportation plane, only to be called
back less than an hour later and told that a conversation was
impossible because she “had just been released in Honduras.”
In a Thursday court filing, lawyers for the father said ICE
indicated that it was holding the 2-year-old girl in a bid to induce
the father to turn himself in. His lawyers didn't describe his
immigration status, but said he has legally delegated the custody of
his daughters to his sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen who also lives in
Baton Rouge.
Cuban-born woman is deported, leaving behind child and husband
In Florida, meanwhile, a Cuban-born woman who is the mother of a
1-year-old girl and the wife of a U.S. citizen was detained at a
scheduled check-in appointment at an Immigration and Customs
Enforcement office in Tampa, her lawyer said Saturday.
Heidy Sánchez was held without any communication and flown to Cuba
two days later. She is still breastfeeding her daughter, who suffers
from seizures, her lawyer, Claudia Cañizares, said.
Cañizares said she tried to file paperwork with ICE to contest the
deportation Thursday morning but ICE refused to accept it, saying
Sánchez was already gone, although Cañizares said she doesn't think
that was true.
Cañizares said she told ICE that she was planning to reopen
Sánchez's case to help her remain in the U.S. legally, but ICE told
her that Sánchez can pursue the case while she's in Cuba.
“I think they’re following orders that they need to remove a certain
amount of people by day and they don’t care, honestly,” Cañizares
said.
Sánchez is not a criminal and has a strong case on humanitarian
grounds for allowing her to stay in the U.S., Cañizares said, but
ICE isn't taking that into consideration when it has to meet what
the lawyer said were deportation benchmarks.
Sánchez had an outstanding deportation order stemming from a missed
hearing in 2019, for which she was detained for nine months,
Cañizares said. Cuba apparently refused to accept Sanchez back at
the time, so Sanchez was released in 2020 and ordered to maintain a
regular schedule of check-ins with ICE, Cañizares said.
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