Latest news with #GrassrootsLeadership
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Deports Two More U.S. Citizen Children After Tricking Their Mom
The Trump administration apparently deported two U.S. citizen children—ages five and four—after surreptitiously luring their mother to an immigration appointment. Denisse Parra Vargas and her husband Omar had just dropped off their three children at school in Austin, Texas, last Thursday when they were pulled over by Texas state troopers ostensibly for having an expired license plate. But then, the police officers turned the couple over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as suspected undocumented immigrants. Omar was sent to an ICE detention center and then deported to Mexico, but Parra Vargas was fitted with an electronic bracelet and told to report to a processing center near Austin on Tuesday. An Austin-based criminal justice and immigration advocacy organization, Grassroots Leadership, said to the Daily Beast that '[s]he was told that if she showed up, then she would be eligible for asylum as well as a work permit.' Parra Vargas complied, and showed up on Tuesday with her three children, two of whom are U.S. citizens, for what she thought was a routine appointment. But then she and all of her children seemed to disappear in ICE custody. Grassroots Leadership scrambled its legal team to try and find them. 'We were just trying to figure out where she was,' a spokesperson for the organization said. 'ICE was not giving us information.' Even entering Parra Vargas's information into ICE's online detainee locator wasn't showing any results. Then, Parra Vargas called the organization to tell them that she had been deported to Mexico with her three children. 'When she called from the other side of the border, she said that she signed a paper, but she wasn't sure exactly what it was,' the spokesperson said. 'She did not understand what she was signing.' ICE seems to have disregarded the fact that two of Parra Vargas's children are citizens, and could have stayed in the U.S. with a caretaker. She does not appear to have been informed of her options, Grassroots Leadership said. 'She never had a chance to consult with anybody,' the organization's spokesperson told the Daily Beast. 'Any efforts from our end to be able to advocate for her release, or even for our legal team to be able to work on her release, none of that was possible because we weren't even able to locate her.' Parra Vargas's situation fits a pattern of haphazard and cruel immigration actions from the Trump administration. Her two U.S. citizen children aren't the first Americans to be swept up by ICE or even deported in President Trump's second term. Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen with learning disabilities, was detained by a Border Patrol officer while visiting Tucson, Arizona, and spent 10 days in ICE detention before being released. Late last month, the Trump administration was caught lying about undocumented immigrant women being deported with their U.S. citizen children. Similar to Parra Vargas, the women were prevented from communicating with legal counsel while in ICE custody. It appears that in order to get around the pesky constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, the Trump administration is deporting them anyway if they're kids.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's Border Czar Secretly Deported Two U.S. Citizen Children
Denisse Parra Vargas and her husband, Omar, had just dropped their three children—aged 9, 5 and 4—at school in Austin last Thursday morning when their car was pulled over by Texas state troopers, at least ostensibly because the license plate was expired. The younger two children—both boys—are U.S. citizens, but that did not dissuade the troopers from turning Parras Vargas and her husband over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as suspected undocumented immigrants. Families and their kids are fair game these days, as Trump's 'border czar' Tom Homan has repeatedly made clear. 'Having a U.S. citizen child after you enter this country illegally is not a get out jail free card,' Homan told CBS News' Face the Nation last month. Denisse Parra Vargas, her husband Omar, and three children have all been removed from the country; the couple's youngest two boys are U.S. citizens. / Grassroots Leadership The father was sent to an ICE detention center then deported to Nuevo Laredo in Mexico, just across the border from Laredo, Texas. The mother was released after being fitted with an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet by the ICE Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). She was instructed to check in at the new Pflugerville processing center on Tuesday. 'She was told that if she showed up, then she would be eligible for asylum as well as a work permit,' a spokesperson for Grassroots Leadership, an Austin-based criminal justice and immigration advocacy group, told the Daily Beast. The 39-year-old mother complied on the appointed day, bringing her kids along. 'Her understanding was that this was supposed to be a routine appointment,' the spokesperson said. 'It was not a threat.' But the mother and her kids then became the latest people to vanish into the immigration system and be held incommunicado. Grassroots Leadership and its legal team began an around-the-clock effort to locate them. 'We were just trying to figure out where she was,' the spokesperson said. 'ICE was not giving us information.' Grassroots Leadership repeatedly entered the woman's alien registration number into the online ICE detainee locator. 'She wasn't showing up,' the spokesperson said. Early Wednesday afternoon, Parra Vargas telephoned the Grassroots folks to say she had been deported and was in Reynosa, just across the border in her native Mexico, 15 miles from where her husband ended up. Their three kids were with her—two of them citizens. 'When she called from the other side of the border, she said that she signed a paper, but she wasn't sure exactly what it was,' the spokesperson told the Daily Beast. 'She did not understand what she was signing.' ICE operates under the command of Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary who has shown a fondness for going on raids and dressing as an ICE agent. / U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via Getty Images The legal team would no doubt have advised her that, as U.S. citizens, her younger two children could not be deported if she chose to place them with a responsible caretaker. But she does not seem to have been given the opportunity for an informed choice. 'She never had a chance to consult with anybody,' the spokesperson said. 'Any efforts from our end to be able to advocate for her release, or even for our legal team to be able to work on her release, none of that was possible because we weren't even able to locate her.' Much the same happened in two other instances in April involving a total of three children who were deported despite being U.S. citizens. Trump's In both cases, the kids were detained along with the mother during what had been presented as a routine check-in. A four-year-old U.S. citizen with metastatic cancer was deported to Honduras along with a seven year-old citizen sibling. The third U.S. citizen deportee last month was just two. When calling for mass deportations, President Donald Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homan speak of an invasion of killers and rapists, a horde he calls 'the worst of the worst.' The only violation of the law in this week's case involving the Parras Vargas family was one so minor it is usually used simply as a pretext to pull people over. 'Their mistake was not having their tags renewed,' the Grassroots Leadership spokesperson said. 'Both of them are loving parents. They have their three kids, and they're just trying to live their lives here in Austin.' Were it not for that car stop, their kids would have been in school on Tuesday. The younger two, who are as American as Trump or Miller or Homan or anyone else born in this country, would have been in kindergarten. 'Learning their numbers, learning how to spell,' the spokesperson said. 'It's May, so I'm assuming right now there's a lot of end of school celebrations... And instead of doing that right now, they are currently on the other side of the border, not sure what their new reality is.' Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has also spoken against the rights of citizen children to remain in the U.S. / Alex Wong / Getty Images The children had been hastily deported before their mother had an opportunity to understand their rights and make a terrible choice that could only be worse if you are cheated of an opportunity to make it. 'They were taken from their home, without the chance for them to even grab any of their belongings, like any toys, any clothes, anything that they might need for their day-to-day lives,' the spokesperson said. 'They don't have any of that, and that's just including the material possessions. There's also the long term psychological damage.' The spokesperson said the Grassroots Leadership legal team will continue to seek a remedy. She added, 'The reality is that this is not the first time that ICE has done this.' Miller has said that if you do not deport the kids they grow up to become adult immigrants. The Parra Vargas brothers will not be the last.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE deports Austin woman and her U.S. citizen children, immigrant advocates say
Austin immigration activists are raising concerns after they say two U.S. citizen minors were removed to Mexico Wednesday alongside their mother, an immigrant without legal status who had resided in the city for at least seven years. Denisse Parra Vargas, 37, was detained a day earlier along with her 9-, 5-, and 4-year-old children after reporting to a Department of Homeland Security facility in Pflugerville for a check-in, according to activist Sulma Franco with Austin-based Grassroots Leadership. Parra Vargas' two youngest two children were born and raised in Austin. 'They were good people,' said Franco, who has known the family for years. 'They were people who were doing all that they could to provide for their families, responsibly, without trouble.' Texas Civil Rights Project lawyer Daniel Hatoum said he had confirmed that Vargas and her children were in Reynosa as of Wednesday afternoon. Franco said she had heard they were at a shelter, hoping to reunite with the children's father, who was deported to Nuevo Laredo in the days before Parra Vargas' deportation. The couple is originally from Mexico. The deportation of Parra Vargas and her children appears to be the latest instance of the Trump administration removing U.S. citizen minors amid its ongoing immigrant crackdown. Last month in Louisiana, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed a four-year-old with Stage 4 cancer after stopping the child, its mother and others. In South Texas, immigration officials also removed four U.S. citizens, aged 6 to 15, along with their parents. One of the children had brain cancer while another had a heart disorder. 'They basically tell the family: 'Either take them with you or we're going to separate them quickly from you,'' said Hatoum, whose organization is representing the South Texas family. 'They then claim that's not really a deportation because they were given the option of going. But it certainly is in a colloquial sense.' U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment about this case. Parra Vargas' arrest came days after immigration officials questioned her and her partner at a traffic stop near Dobie Middle School in North Austin's Rundberg neighborhood on Thursday, according to Grassroots Leadership spokesperson Maria Reza. During that encounter with law enforcement, Parra Vargas' partner, Omar Gallardo Rodriguez, was arrested and deported back to the couple's native Mexico within days, while Parra Vargas was given an ankle monitor, Reza said. Hatoum said he believes Parra Vargas went to the Pflugerville facility in part because she believed it would help her partner's case. 'There is some level of gamesmanship to this,' Hatoum said. It's unclear if Parra Vargas or her partner had a deportation order, or if they either had any criminal history or previous record under immigration detainment. According to Reza, Parra Vargas had a pending asylum case. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: ICE deports Austin woman to Mexico alongside her U.S. citizen children
