A Texas mother says she was unfairly deported to Mexico and forced to depart the U.S. with her four children after missing an immigration court hearing because she was recovering from delivering premature newborn twins by emergency C-section.
Since coming to Mexico, Ashley and Allison, two American citizens who were born in Houston, have been suffering from bronchitis and pneumonia and frequently use oxygen masks to breathe, according to 23-year-old Salazar-Hinojosa, who spoke to Noticias Telemundo in Spanish.
“Seeing my daughters ill makes me feel horrible and sad,” she remarked.
The twins’ birth in September, according to the family, set off the series of events.
“An emergency C-section was required for me. My children were born too soon. “My hemorrhage made me very sick,” Salazar-Hinojosa stated.
Salazar-Hinojosa’s husband, Federico Arellano, who is also the father of the children, told KHOU in Houston that his wife did not attend her immigration hearing on October 9 because physicians advised her to recuperate at home.
Salazar-Hinojosa and Arellano got married in 2019. Salazar-Hinojosa is a Mexican national, and Arellano is a Houston-born American citizen.
Arellano and his lawyer, Isaias Torres, said the family called the immigration court to let them know what was going on. The hearing will be rescheduled, they were informed.
Later, they were instructed over the phone to come to an immigration office in Greenspoint, Texas, on December 10th to talk about Salazar-Hinojosa’s case, according to Noticias Telemundo.
According to Salazar-Hinojosa, she went into the appointment expecting it to be just like any other regular appointment she had made in the past.
Instead, according to Torres and Arellano, who attended the meeting with his family, immigration officials detained Salazar-Hinojosa and returned her and her four children—a 7-year-old, a 2-year-old, and the newborn twins—to Mexico.
“We had nothing with us—no diapers, no clothes, nothing. Salazar-Hinojosa told Noticias Telemundo, “We had nothing with us.” “They didn t let me make any calls to my family, they took my phone away from me, they snatched it out of my hands.”
Arellano made an effort to step in for his family. Salazar-Hinojosa said that her husband pleaded with immigration officials to spare him and his family.
“He wanted to see if we could get a lawyer to see what we could do, and they said no, that they had to take us now,” recalled Salazar-Hinojosa. Immigration officials then demanded that she sign the documents for her deportation, she added.
“They threatened to arrest my husband and fine him if I didn’t sign the deportation forms and all that,” Salazar-Hinojosa said, adding that she was worried they would do so if she didn’t sign; “they forced me.”
On Wednesday, NBC News was informed by immigration officials that Salazar-Hinojosa had been deported from Texas.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News that it had only legally deported Salazar-Hinojosa, despite reports from other media outlets that the mother, the twins, and the other two children had been deported.
“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.
Salazar-Hinojosa entered the country illegally on June 28 through the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas, 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.
The spokesperson said Salazar-Hinojosa failed to show up to the Oct. 9 hearing and was ordered removed by a judge with the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. A request for comment from DOJ was not answered.
Torrestold WOAIthat “this case shouldn t have gone to this extreme. There were options, legal options that were available and he was not given that opportunity.
Torres did not immediately respond to a request from NBC News for comment on Wednesday. A second attorney representing Arellano and his family, Silvia Mintz, did not immediately return a phone call from NBC News requesting comment on Thursday.
ButMintz told Noticias Telemundoshe believes “ICE officers abused their discretion, because Cristina is not a criminal, the children are newborns, and this could have been resolved with a motion to reopen the case.”
Both Mintz and Torres told KHOU Arellano tried to explain, but ICE agents prevented him.
They were shocked and surprised that they were separated, Torres said.
The attorneys have said they plan to file a complaint with the Office of Inspector General as well as immigration petitions to see if Salazar-Hinojosa and her children can return to the U.S. under parole. That process could take several months.
President Joe Biden has been criticized by Republicans who have said his policies have left the border open to illegal immigration. But in June, the Migration Policy Institute reported that Biden s deportations wereon track to surpass those of Donald Trump’s first administration.
Trump was elected in November after vowing to conduct the largest mass deportation operation in American history. 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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