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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Mass deportation effort sweeps up U.S. citizen children with deported parents
The Trump administration is coming under scrutiny for deporting several U.S. citizen children along with their foreign-born parents. Trump officials have defended the move, saying the minors were not deported, rather the parents have elected to take them along rather than be separated from their children. But attorneys for the families involved in such cases say their clients were given little notice and forced to make split-second decisions about what to do with children born in the United States. Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.), has been in contact with attorneys for several families, including a Honduran woman with two U.S. citizen children, including a 4-year-old with stage 4 cancer. 'At no time did the mother offer any consent. At no time did the mother sign anything. Also, the mother was not given the opportunity to speak with legal counsel, even though the lawyer was in the same building at the time,' Magaziner told The Hill. 'There's a specific set of protocols that ICE is supposed to follow any time they are preparing to remove someone who has a minor child, whether that child is a citizen or not, and that includes providing access to legal counsel, which was not done in any of these cases,' he added, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That woman, known by initials RMV, is not alone. Another Honduran mother, JLV, was deported to Honduras with her 2-year-old U.S. citizen child as the father was preparing custody documents. And then there's the case of two Mexican parents living in Texas who were deported along with five of their six children after being stopped at a border checkpoint. The family was en route to Houston for emergency treatment for their 10-year-old, U.S. citizen daughter who had recently had a brain tumor removed. The Hernandez family, using a pseudonym to protect their privacy, pleaded while in custody for staff to look at documentation from the hospital requesting permission to travel. Instead, they spent the night in custody before being taken to a bridge and turned over to Mexican authorities in an area rife with kidnappings. The family has since gone into hiding in rural Mexico. Danny Woodward, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project who is working on the Hernandez family's case, said the mixed status family has multiple children who were born in the U.S., as well as one born in Mexico. 'The parents were not offered any sort of meaningful choice about what to do with their daughter or any of their U.S. citizen kids. CBP will repeatedly say, 'Oh, the parents were all given the choice about what to have happen.' But what happened in this case is that the parents were repeatedly pressured to sign deportation papers and basically said, 'Your two options are to take your children back to Mexico, all of them, or hand them over to government custody and you will never see them again,'' he said of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents that dealt with the family. 'That's not a meaningful choice.' Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, met with the Hernandez family in Monterrey, Mexico, earlier this month. He said it's been disruptive for the family — the daughter isn't getting treatment, while the U.S. citizen children can't officially enroll in school. He's hoping to get passports for the U.S. citizen children and humanitarian parole for the parents and their one Mexican citizen child. That would allow the family to return to the U.S. so the daughter can continue to get medical care unavailable in Mexico. 'The little girl is not able to get the treatment she needs to get to deal with her illness,' Espaillat said. 'This is happening more than we think it is happening, and that this mass deportation effort by the administration will now, now seems to be kicking in, and it's sort of like on steroids, right,' he added. 'It's happening to green card-holders and U.S. citizens, particularly children. So it's not just an undocumented issue — it's impacting everybody.' Sirine Shebaya, executive director for the National Immigration Project, which is representing both of the Honduran women who were deported with their children, said ICE agents in Louisiana did not follow established protocol for handling family situations. Shebaya said past administrations have not moved to deport the parent of a citizen child if they were not otherwise considered a public safety risk. 'There's a requirement that parents be given an opportunity to make decisions about what happens with their children, because, obviously, as a U.S. citizen, you have a right to be here. You are not able to be deported. And in this situation, neither of the moms was given an opportunity to make a decision about what happens with their kids,' she said. Shebaya said the mothers should have been presented with forms, translated into their native language, as well as time to consult with an attorney and other family members, including to arrange the possibility of leaving the child with a designated custodian. Instead, one was never informed her lawyer was trying to reach her and both were told their children would be removed with them. 'The families in Louisiana were evidently and clearly not given any choice in the matter at all, and if they had been given a choice, there would have been documentation of a process and a conversation. It's also not possible to have the ability to make a choice in less than 24 hours, about two children, one of whom is extremely sick,' she said. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem framed the matter as an election of the parents, telling Magaziner and other lawmakers during questioning in earlier in May that 'we do not deport U.S. citizens and have not deported U.S. citizens.' Homan says having US-born children does not make people 'immune' from deportation The Trump administration also lashed out this week following a report from The Washington Post detailing the case of a 2-year-old born in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Brazilian parents without legal status in the U.S. The child, Emanuelly Borges Santos, is now left in bureaucratic limbo. U.S. immigration officials confiscated her parents' Brazilian travel documents, leaving them unable to secure Brazilian citizenship for their daughter at a consulate in South Florida. When she arrived on a deportation flight with her parents in Brazil, Borges Santos had only her U.S. travel documents — meaning she had to enter the country as a tourist. That status is set to expire in days, and Borges Santos has no simple way to gain citizenship in a country that, like the U.S., has birthright citizenship or requires foreign births to be registered at consulates abroad. 'The media is force-feeding the public false information that U.S. citizen children are being deported. This is FALSE and irresponsible,' the Department of Homeland Security said in a tweet. 'Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with someone the parent designates. Parents, who are here illegally, can take control of their departure through the CBP Home app. The United States is offering illegal aliens $1,000 and a free flight to self-deport now.' But critics say removals amount to deportation and ignore the complexities faced by such families. Woodward said that the Hernandez family's son was out of town when the rest of the family was deported and remains in the U.S. 'He just lost his whole family. He's been separated from everybody,' he said. Woodward pointed to comments from border czar Tom Homan, who recently said having U.S. citizen children doesn't make someone 'immune' from immigration laws, and that 'families get separated every day by law enforcement.' Woodward noted parallels with the family separation policy implemented under the first Trump administration. 'Zooming out a little bit, the whole purported point of family separation was to be as cruel as possible to try to send a message to people about coming to the United States,' the attorney said. 'And this is the exact same thing, and that's the clear, stated intent.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Mass deportation effort sweeps up U.S. citizen children with deported parents
The Trump administration is coming under scrutiny for deporting several U.S. citizen children along with their foreign-born parents. Trump officials have defended the move, saying the minors were not deported, rather the parents have elected to take them along rather than be separated from their children. But attorneys for the families involved in such cases say their clients were given little notice and forced to make split-second decisions about what to do with children born in the United States. Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.), has been in contact with attorneys for several families, including a Honduran woman with two U.S. citizen children, including a 4-year-old with stage 4 cancer. 'At no time did the mother offer any consent. At no time did the mother sign anything. Also, the mother was not given the opportunity to speak with legal counsel, even though the lawyer was in the same building at the time,' Magaziner told The Hill. 'There's a specific set of protocols that ICE is supposed to follow any time they are preparing to remove someone who has a minor child, whether that child is a citizen or not, and that includes providing access to legal counsel, which was not done in any of these cases,' he added, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That woman, known by initials RMV, is not alone. Another Honduran mother, JLV, was deported to Honduras with her 2-year-old U.S. citizen child as the father was preparing custody documents. And then there's the case of two Mexican parents living in Texas who were deported along with five of their six children after being stopped at a border checkpoint. The family was en route to Houston for emergency treatment for their 10-year-old, U.S. citizen daughter who had recently had a brain tumor removed. The Hernandez family, using a pseudonym to protect their privacy, pleaded while in custody for staff to look at documentation from the hospital requesting permission to travel. Instead, they spent the night in custody before being taken to a bridge and turned over to Mexican authorities in an area rife with kidnappings. The family has since gone into hiding in rural Mexico. Danny Woodward, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project who is working on the Hernandez family's case, said the mixed status family has multiple children who were born in the U.S., as well as one born in Mexico. 'The parents were not offered any sort of meaningful choice about what to do with their daughter or any of their U.S. citizen kids. CBP will repeatedly say, 'Oh, the parents were all given the choice about what to have happen.' But what happened in this case is that the parents were repeatedly pressured to sign deportation papers and basically said, 'Your two options are to take your children back to Mexico, all of them, or hand them over to government custody and you will never see them again,'' he said of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents that dealt with the family. 'That's not a meaningful choice.' Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, met with the Hernandez family in Monterrey, Mexico, earlier this month. He said it's been disruptive for the family — the daughter isn't getting treatment, while the U.S. citizen children can't officially enroll in school. He's hoping to get passports for the U.S. citizen children and humanitarian parole for the parents and their one Mexican citizen child. That would allow the family to return to the U.S. so the daughter can continue to get medical care unavailable in Mexico. 'The little girl is not able to get the treatment she needs to get to deal with her illness,' Espaillat said. 'This is happening more than we think it is happening, and that this mass deportation effort by the administration will now, now seems to be kicking in, and it's sort of like on steroids, right,' he added. 'It's happening to green card-holders and U.S. citizens, particularly children. So it's not just an undocumented issue — it's impacting everybody.' Sirine Shebaya, executive director for the National Immigration Project, which is representing both of the Honduran women who were deported with their children, said ICE agents in Louisiana did not follow established protocol for handling family situations. Shebaya said past administrations have not moved to deport the parent of a citizen child if they were not otherwise considered a public safety risk. 'There's a requirement that parents be given an opportunity to make decisions about what happens with their children, because, obviously, as a U.S. citizen, you have a right to be here. You are not able to be deported. And in this situation, neither of the moms was given an opportunity to make a decision about what happens with their kids,' she said. Shebaya said the mothers should have been presented with forms, translated into their native language, as well as time to consult with an attorney and other family members, including to arrange the possibility of leaving the child with a designated custodian. Instead, one was never informed her lawyer was trying to reach her and both were told their children would be removed with them. 'The families in Louisiana were evidently and clearly not given any choice in the matter at all, and if they had been given a choice, there would have been documentation of a process and a conversation. It's also not possible to have the ability to make a choice in less than 24 hours, about two children, one of whom is extremely sick,' she said. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem framed the matter as an election of the parents, telling Magaziner and other lawmakers during questioning in earlier in May that 'we do not deport U.S. citizens and have not deported U.S. citizens.' The Trump administration also lashed out this week following a report from The Washington Post detailing the case of a 2-year-old born in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Brazilian parents without legal status in the U.S. The child, Emanuelly Borges Santos, is now left in bureaucratic limbo. U.S. immigration officials confiscated her parents' Brazilian travel documents, leaving them unable to secure Brazilian citizenship for their daughter at a consulate in South Florida. When she arrived on a deportation flight with her parents in Brazil, Borges Santos had only her U.S. travel documents — meaning she had to enter the country as a tourist. That status is set to expire in days, and Borges Santos has no simple way to gain citizenship in a country that, like the U.S., has birthright citizenship or requires foreign births to be registered at consulates abroad. 'The media is force-feeding the public false information that U.S. citizen children are being deported. This is FALSE and irresponsible,' the Department of Homeland Security said in a tweet. 'Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with someone the parent designates. Parents, who are here illegally, can take control of their departure through the CBP Home app. The United States is offering illegal aliens $1,000 and a free flight to self-deport now.' But critics say removals amount to deportation and ignore the complexities faced by such families. Woodward said that the Hernandez family's son was out of town when the rest of the family was deported and remains in the U.S. 'He just lost his whole family. He's been separated from everybody,' he said. Woodward pointed to comments from border czar Tom Homan, who recently said having U.S. citizen children doesn't make someone 'immune' from immigration laws, and that 'families get separated every day by law enforcement.' Woodward noted parallels with the family separation policy implemented under the first Trump administration. 'Zooming out a little bit, the whole purported point of family separation was to be as cruel as possible to try to send a message to people about coming to the United States,' the attorney said. 'And this is the exact same thing, and that's the clear, stated intent.'
NBC News
25-05-2025
- Health
- NBC News
May 25 - Lost & Lonely: America's Mental Health Crisis
Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Arthur Brooks join a special edition of Meet the Press on America's mental health crisis. Lori Gottlieb, Nedra Glover Tawwab and Jean Twenge join the Meet the Press 25, 2025
E&E News
13-05-2025
- Politics
- E&E News
Senate Dems to highlight climate change, insurance concerns
Two senior Senate Democrats will hold a forum Tuesday on the impacts of climate change on property insurance rates, at the same time Republicans are holding a related hearing. Environment and Public Works ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Finance ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) will question homeowners, a Florida mayor and an expert on insurance issues. Their event is intended to 'expose how inaction on climate change is creating an insurance crisis that risks cascading into an economy-wide shock,' according to a release. Advertisement 'Climate risk — whether from floods, wildfires, or extreme weather — is increasing nationwide, and it is both driving up homeowners' insurance premiums and making it harder to obtain coverage. Without access to insurance, more and more Americans will be unable to secure a 30-year mortgage for a home, which will undermine property values,' the release said.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate Fails To Rebuke Trump Over His Global Tariffs Due To Absences
WASHINGTON ― The U.S. Senate was on track to adopt a resolution disapproving of President Donald Trump's global tariffs on Wednesday, but the measure failed after two lawmakers ― one Democrat and one Republican ― missed the vote. Had Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who was returning from a climate conference in South Korea, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), another critic of Trump's tariffs, been present, the effort likely would have passed, dealing another rebuke to the White House's erratic trade policies that have rattled financial markets, sapped consumer confidence, and put the economy on the precipice of a recession. But the vote failed 49-49. It came just two weeks after another effort seeking to terminate Trump's emergency powers to levy tariffs on Canada, a U.S. ally, was approved with the support of both Whitehouse and McConnell. The attempts to block Trump's tariffs are largely symbolic, however, since the GOP-controlled House of Representatives is refusing to allow a similar vote in that chamber. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul joined every member of the Democratic caucus in voting for the resolution on Wednesday. The overwhelming majority of Republicans stuck by Trump and voted to sustain his trade policy even after a new report from the U.S. Commerce Department found the U.S. economy actually shrank in the first three months of 2025, the first decline since the first quarter of 2022. Earlier this month, in a stunning reversal on his initial tariff scheme, Trump slapped 10% tariffs on everything Americans buy from overseas, and 125% tariffs on everything they buy from China. He has promised even higher tariffs in July on products from nearly five dozen countries as part of his goal of rebalancing international trade and rebuilding U.S. manufacturing. Top Trump officials have claimed that dozens of countries have approached the U.S. seeking to ink trade deals that would, at least theoretically, make the tariffs on their nations go away. The Trump administration has yet to reveal one, and lawmakers of both parties are losing patience. 'Many products from China won't even be available soon, thanks to the tariffs,' said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a lead Democratic sponsor of Wednesday's resolution. 'For the products that are still available, prices are going up, a fact that Trump is desperate to hide. When Amazon was rumored to list the impact of tariffs on prices, Trump threw a fit, reportedly threatening Jeff Bezos and calling it a hostile act. God forbid Americans know the real cost of tariffs.' Paul, meanwhile, argued that Congress needs to reassert its constitutional authority over trade that it has delegated over decades to the executive branch by allowing presidents to levy tariffs unilaterally under a national emergency. 'I still support the president on many things but I am not for a country run by emergencies ― even if the person were doing everything I wanted [like] making every day my birthday. I would not be for that unless we deliberated on that,' Paul said in a Wednesday speech on the Senate floor. 'The Constitution does not allow the president of the United States to be the sole decider,' he added. The Kentucky Republican, a libertarian-leaning voice in the Senate, further chided the House of Representatives for making a procedural move to effectively block any House effort to cancel Trump's tariffs despite several Republicans offering legislation to do so. 'They declared that legislative days will not exist despite the legislature continuing to meet every day. The House has essentially ruled that days are not days,' Paul said. 'Does that sound absurd? Absolutely, it's absurd. It is craven, it is cowardice, and it is dishonest.' 'We have congressional timidity,' he lamented. 'It's a recipe for disaster.' Trump, meanwhile, has shown no signs of letting up on the tariffs ― which are effectively taxes paid by U.S. consumers ― even as he has granted exceptions to certain large corporations. During a Wednesday meeting with his Cabinet, the president said that children in the U.S. may just have to live with fewer toys if store shelves go empty. 'Much of it we don't need,' he said of goods coming from China. 'Somebody said, 'Oh the shelves are gonna be empty.' Well maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.'
