ICE has deported a breastfeeding mother, as well as 3 children who are U.S. citizens, lawyers say

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in recent days have deported the breastfeeding 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 cases raise questions about who is being deported and why, and come amid a battle in federal courts over whether President Trump’s immigration crackdown has gone too far and too quickly, in violation of the law and 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.

The American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigration Project and 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 give 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 said he wanted the girl to remain with him in the U.S., while ICE contended that the mother had wanted the child 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 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 was arrested Tuesday 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. Both the mother and 11-year-old girl apparently had outstanding deportation orders. The family lived in Baton Rouge, La.

Doughty called government lawyers Friday to speak to the woman while she was in the air on a deportation plane. Government lawyers called back less than an hour later, saying 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 an effort to induce the father to turn himself in. His lawyers did not 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.

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 ICE 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, said her lawyer, Claudia Cañizares.

Cañizares said she tried to file paperwork with ICE to contest the deportation Thursday morning but the agency 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 the agency 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 Sánchez back at the time, so Sánchez was released in 2020 and ordered to maintain a regular schedule of check-ins with ICE, Cañizares said.

Levy writes for the Associated Press.