The mother of two very infant U.S. citizens was deported from Texas, according to confirmation from immigration officials on Wednesday.
The mother, twins, and two other children were detained and deported to Mexico after the mother skipped a hearing while recuperating from giving birth to the babies by emergency cesarean section, according to a lawyer for the woman’s husband and the father of the children.
In September, the twins were born. According to media accounts, the mother, the twins, and two additional children were deported. However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News that it does not deport U.S. citizens and that it solely deported the mother, identified as 23-year-old Cristina Geraldyn Salazar-Hinojosa.
“American citizens are not deported by ICE. According to an ICE representative, parents have the last say over whether or not their minor children who are citizens of the United States leave the country with their parents.
Federico Arellano, the father of the children, is a citizen of the United States.
According to WOAI in San Antonio, the mother’s scheduled immigration court had to be postponed due to the emergency C-section.
Salazar-Hinojosa allegedly entered the country unlawfully on June 28 through the Rio Grande Valley region, according to ICE. According to the spokeswoman, she was released on June 29 while her immigration proceedings were still ongoing under the Alternatives to Detention program.
According to the spokesman, a judge with the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review ordered Salazar-Hinojosa to be removed after she failed to appear at a hearing on October 9. A request for comment from DOJ was not answered.
Salazar-Hinojosa’s husband’s lawyer, Isaias Torres, told WOAI that “this case shouldn’t have gone to this extreme.” He was not given the opportunity to choose from the legal options that were available.
A request for comment from NBC News was not immediately answered by Torres.
Salazar-Hinojosa missed the hearing because physicians advised her to recuperate at home, the lawyer told KHOU in Houston. Additionally, he stated that when the family called the court to let them know, they were informed that the hearing would be rescheduled. When they arrived, they were detained, Torres told KHOU, despite having been instructed in a subsequent phone conversation to report to a place in the Houston area to resolve their case.
Attorneys told KHOU that ICE authorities stopped Arellano from explaining.
According to Torres, they were taken aback and astonished to find themselves apart.
Republicans have attacked President Joe Biden, claiming that his policies have allowed illegal immigrants to cross the border. However, the Migration Policy Institute stated in June that Biden’s deportations were expected to overtake those of the first Trump administration.
After promising to carry out the biggest mass deportation operation in American history, Trump was elected president in November. His pick to head ICE, Tim Homan, has said that the only way to not break up families under Trump s plan is to send them all back.
People born in the United States with the exception of children of certain foreign diplomats are constitutionally guaranteed U.S. citizenship regardless of whether their parents are illegally here.Trump recently said in a “Meet the Press” exclusive interviewthat he wants to end that guarantee.
Ina 2021 report, the Government Accountability Office found that over about five years, ICE arrested 674, detained 121 and removed 70 people that the GAO said were potentially U.S. citizens. The GAO found ICE did not keep sufficient data on U.S. citizen deportations at the time.
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