Two top Trump administration officials Sunday hit back at accusations that young children with US citizenship were being deported to their parents’ country of origin.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and border czar Tom Homan insisted that the children’s deported parents made the decision to bring their kids along with them, rather than the Trump administration booting the young American citizens.
“Children aren’t deported,” Homan said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“The mother chose to take the children with her,” he said of a recent case. “[If] you’re here illegally, and you choose to have a US citizen child, that’s on you” on what to do if you get deported.
“That’s not on this administration,” he said.
Rubio also complained about the media coverage of children getting sent back to their deported parents’ country of origin.
“You guys make it sound like [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents kicked down the door and grabbed a 2-year-old and threw him on an airplane. That’s misleading. That’s just not true,” he said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
Last week, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana raised concerns that the administration sent a 2-year-old back to Honduras alongside her deported mother “with no meaningful process,” despite the father’s wishes to keep her in the US.
Responding to an emergency petition from the child’s father, Judge Terry Doughty griped that “the court doesn’t know that” it was actually the mother’s “wishes that the child be deported with her.” Doughty also stressed that it’s “illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a US citizen.
“I disagree with the judge. It was due process,” Homan said. “That female had due process at great taxpayer expense and was ordered by an immigration judge after those hearings.
“This is Parenting 101,” he said. “You can decide to take that child with you, or you can decide to leave a child here with a relative or another spouse.
“Having a US citizen child doesn’t make you immune from our laws of the country.”
When pressed about Doughty’s concerns that there wasn’t adequate due process, Homan expressed doubts that “the judge knows specifics of this case” and added that it’s “not a government decision, it’s a parent’s decision.”
In addition to the 2-year-old, referred to as V.M.L. in court documents, there was also controversy over a 4-year-old with stage 4 cancer being sent back to their mother’s country of origin.
“The children went with their mothers,” Rubio explained. “If those children are US citizens, they can come back into the United States if their father or someone here who wants to assume them.
“Ultimately who was deported was their mothers, who were here illegally. The children just went with their mothers.”
A lawyer for the child with cancer alleged that the 4-year-old was sent out of the US without medication or an adequate way to keep in touch with US-based doctors during the trip.
President Trump has been keen on carrying out deportations across the country expeditiously.
Trump’s team has also been fighting in the courts to end birthright citizenship, the policy under the 14th Amendment of automatically granting citizenship to anyone born in the US.
Backers of his effort believe that ending birthright citizenship will eliminate a key incentive for illegal migrants to enter the US.