Immigration officials confirmed Wednesday that they had deported from Texas the mother of two relatively newborn U.S.-citizens.
An attorney for the woman’s husband and children’s father said the mother, twins and two other children were arrested and sent to Mexico after the mother missed a hearing while recovering from delivering the infants by emergency C-section.
The twins were born in September. Media reports said the mother, the infant twins and two more children had been deported. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News that it deported only the mother, whom it identified as Cristina Geraldyn Salazar-Hinojosa, 23, and that ICE does not deport U.S. citizens.
"ICE does not deport U.S. citizens. Any decision for minors with U.S. citizenship to depart the U.S. with their parents is up to the parents,” an ICE spokesperson said.
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The children’s father, Federico Arellano, is a U.S. citizen.
The mother was scheduled for an immigration hearing but had to postpone it because of the emergency C-section, WOAI in San Antonio reported.
ICE alleged Salazar-Hinojosa entered the U.S. illegally on June 28 through the Rio Grande Valley area. The spokesperson said she was released June 29 under the Alternatives to Detention program, pending her immigration proceedings.
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The spokesperson said Salazar-Hinojosa failed to show up to an Oct. 9 hearing and was ordered removed by a judge with the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review. DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
Isaias Torres, an attorney for Salazar-Hinojosa's husband, told WOAI that "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.
The attorney told KHOU in Houston that Salazar-Hinojosa missed the hearing because she was told by doctors to recover at home. He also said the family called the court to inform them and was told the hearing would be rescheduled. They were told in a later phone call to report to a Houston-area location to discuss their case but were arrested when they showed up, Torres told KHOU.
Arellano tried to explain but ICE agents prevented him, attorneys told KHOU.
“They were shocked and surprised that they were separated,” Torres said.
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 were on 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 interview that he wants to end that guarantee.
In a 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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