ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation

>but the truly damned are all the Americans who know and sense better but do not or cannot act properly.

MLK said it best: "the moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"

And even now you have people that think showing up with clever signs around the downtown parks / public areas on the weekend when all the government offices are closed are somehow going to get their message across. It's not enough. It was never enough. It wasn't enough for Vietnam or Iraq. It's definitely not going to be enough now. Americans are going to have to choose to do some uncomfortable and maybe even risky things to demonstrate our disapproval.

Or we have to admit that for many of us, this is who we actually are as a country. It certainly is a good bit of the voting public. I don't think it's a mistake that in basically one generation we lied to the world about Iraq then elected a fascist twice. And at that point I don't think stern dissent is an effective or even morally correct course of action.

It’s worse than that. Far too many of us want this stuff.

I understand the basic idea of how you fight an oppressive regime everyone hates. I have no idea how you go about fighting one that half the country supports. Protests aren’t going to fix that.

Last time around, I could at least soothe myself with the idea that he only won because our electoral system is idiotic, and a lot of voters didn’t understand what they were voting for. This time? He won the most votes, and everyone had every opportunity to see what they were getting. I can only conclude that my countrymen are fucked in the head.

Prosecutorial discretion hasn’t meant much to me since the Bond got prosecuted for violating a chemical weapons treaty, and Yates got prosecuted for fish-shredding.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_v._United_States_(2014)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yates_v._United_States_(2015...

They wouldn't let these kids have toothpaste the last time they did this.

Jesus christ hn

How do you arrange this when not allowed to speak with anyone?

Easy to explain, traumatic to experiment.

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Actually what happened in the US court here is the US court attempted to intercede while the mother and child were still in US custody and ICE ignored the court until they had successfully removed the mother and child from US custody. As a result the court never got to learn the mothers wishes at all.

(Also not true, but that's besides the point)

She was initially unaware the child could remain. When she found out she wanted the child to stay.

Or at least that is what some reports say. It’s confusing. Fortunately we have a system to due process to figure these issues out.

Unfortunately the current regime has decided that all due process is subject to their discretion.

While true, kinda irrelevant?

The habeas petition for VMS (the two year old) indicates the father (who was not detained at the time of the filing) transferred provisional custody rights to a US citizen relative, and that communications with the mother (who was removed along with their US citizen child) were cut off when he tried to share their lawyers contact info

PDF: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.21...

Only few countries give birthright to children born on their territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

What happens is a single parent is sent to prison? The state takes care of the children.

What’s the non-extreme option, if the plan is to kick out the non-citizen parents of US citizen children?

That’s a strawman argument that I would never advocate, and completely ignores my question.

Alternatives include arranging legal custody for the child and to stay in the US with a relative (as one family was attempting), or finding a legal way for them to leave the country with their parents.

Instead, it seems the government is rushing to illegally remove these children before the courts can intervene

No one is saying parents cannot be deported. Rather that ICE clearly engineered the circumstances to ensure the child and mother were deported without any practical opportunity for the child to stay.

Entering the US without permission is a civil offense, not a crime in the way most people think of them.

This is like claiming that getting conscripted into the Russian Federation Armed Forces is a direct consequence of entering illegally

So is their life forfeit now, and the respective goverment absolved of responsibility?

Did a judge rule on this alleged "illegally"? Elon Musk also entered the country illegally to work by pretending to be a student, and somehow he got given the keys to the treasury.

Americans are extremely cruel.

The real solution to this is to end jus solis.

Separating children from parents is incredibly cruel, inhumane, even.

Yep. Their rabble rousing lies are meeting the hard reality that the country depends on these workers. They can't deliver without destroying the food and construction industries. So it's random German tourists at the border.

Unless it’s Tyson chicken and the undocumented workers are getting a bit “uppitty” about OSHA stuff, then coordinate a raid but when the workers talk about the printed instructions they got from Tyson about how to fill out paperwork if you are undocumented, and what you plan to do about that, “we have no plans to investigate the company”.

I suspect it's Trump donors they may be looking to spare, at least a bit. I don't get the impression they care about previous Trump voters very much, except to buy merch at this point.

Also, businesses caught employing illegal immigrants seemingly don't face any punishment either. Migrants wouldn't enter the US illegally if they couldn't find employment, and they wouldn't find employment if businesses were harshly punished. As it is, everyone is incentivized to keep this cat and mouse game going.

People here really seem to like ignoring that part for some reason. That is a very real line that had not previously been crossed.

No, this kind of deportation and treatment of prisoners/detainees has been happening forever. This exact behavior has been happening forever, not just a general idea of malfeasance. The current attention on it smacks of politics in a way that is also very inhuman. Remember the "kids in cages" saga?

>I don't like this kind of response because it's basically kind of an assumption, and you don't really give any evidence for it.

Whether you like it or not, it has indeed been happening for a long time, and under multiple administrations from either party. If you're interested in the tragedy of it all enough to care, then go look these cases up instead of first accusing someone of lying because they might be smearing a politician that you preferred, and who isn't the current orangutan in the White House.

Trump's administration is notably and vocally hostile to illegal immigrants, to migrants and I suspect to immigrants in general, but it's mainly still using the tools and practices that have long since been refined by multiple federal agencies whenever opportunities for heavy-handedness presented themselves.

Because it's Trump's administration, and enough of the major media system is unsupportive of him (still, for now), the matter is gaining more attention. This attention is a good thing, but it shouldn't cloud one from considering the possibility that the bureaucratic defects and authoritarian inertia of federal policing exist beyond the confines of a single type of administration.

It is genuinely an extremely difficult challenge to manage illegal crossings if every individual must be processed through the full U.S. legal system which has massive resourcing and backlog problems (3m+ cases).

Voters across the political spectrum have made it unmistakably clear — in poll after poll — that they are deeply dissatisfied with the current rate of illegal and asylum-seeking entries.

Is there a morally permissible way to enact their will?

My guy will do better with the power they never destroy.

no one is less of a citizen than anyone else

This is not true - a citizen by birth can become the president, a naturalized citizen cannot.

I don't think it was meant to devalue their citizenship, but citizenship doesn't trump their safety or need to be with their parents. The parents are going to be deported for being here illegally, would you have the child be separated and put in a foster/community home? Emotions are important but the only pragmatic solution here is to deport all 3, if your nation's policy is deportation for being here illegally. I agree with that policy in general but not with the US policy of Trump of manhandling illegal aliens or their children. Nor do I agree the lawlessness of what they're doing currently by sending off "suspected gang members" without due process to what amount to torture camps in El Salvador.

What you’re really saying is you want this family broken up for the rage bait. You want the picture of a child crying for their mother as the plane takes off for the views.

US hospitals do not have magical pixie dust to grant US citizenship.

This is why birthright as a legal concept is a diminishment of citizenship for all those who hold it.

Parents pass on the shared history, values, and national culture to their kids. Parents are those who give value to US citizenship.

Not coming out of a belly, that happens to be inside a US hospital.

And then, what? Are citizens beating down the doors to do these jobs but getting out-competed by migrants? Are these the same citizens who are lining up to do sweatshop labor when manufacturing “returns” to the US?

If undocumented workers are finding productive work in an economy with low unemployment then the problem is that the government is not facilitating them gaining legal status.

Agree and proper border control which the previous administration failed to enforce. Step 1 is stop the influx.

Not enough. Some immigrants come and stay to commit crimes.

While plenty of people would prefer 2) there would be a lot less outcry if they were allowing 1) especially in cases where the kid already has a legal USC guardian like the one discussed here where the father couldn't even speak with the mother before her and his child was deported.

> 2. Dont deport illegal immigrants who have USC kids (basically making birthright transitive to parents)

Birthright is somewhat transitive. US citizens can sponsor family members for a green card once they’re 18.

> The parents are in the US illegally

No, the father is not. And when trying to get the mother legal help for her situation was cut off from her. Same when the court tried to get information, ICE ignored it, got her on a plane and then shortly after said “sorry, too late”.

Let's remind ourselves of the text of the 14th amendment:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

> It has been proposed that the US citizenship model was always like the Swiss model - you could only be a citizen if you were born of at least 1 citizen (naturalized or otherwise). For reasons I'm not clear, this has not been strictly enforced for some time.

I think any clear reading of the 14th amendment shows that you are incorrect.

Why does the birthright status quo need resolving? Why is there magic pixie dust based on who your parents are? None of these are fundamental truths. The US and the Swiss just chose different laws.

> It has been proposed that the US citizenship model was always like the Swiss model - you could only be a citizen if you were born of at least 1 citizen (naturalized or otherwise)

I like this a lot. That makes total sense and would take away the incentive to cross the border to give birth.

The people that come here legally don't really build anything of significant value when you compare it to entire immigrant communities. Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, Irish, you name it, they build vast amounts of culture and businesses that get integrated into America. Even if you give me 2 million of the smartest legal immigrants, they will pale in comparison to what large immigrant communities offer to the fabric of America. This is deeply American issue, you either get it or you don't.

Just Apu from the Simpsons is only possible due to our immigration. Just the very fucking iconic cartoon character. This is not from legal immigration. Taco Tuesdays, every Irish pub, like, it sounds silly, but what they offer America is ten fold. I do not care about the best and the brightest, give us your tired and poor.

The American right-wing reeks of elitism (soft language for racist/xenophobic) and it is the antithesis of the American spirit and dream. I'm not with it.

This will be one of my final posts on this topic because I believe we are only in month five, and have 3.5 years to go. I pray the midterms are a landslide, and I pray the next Democrat grants Amnesty. See you all on the other side, because to me this issue is no different than the anit-gay marriage bullshit from the 2000s that we wiped the table clean of once and for all. We are a nation of immigrants and we will be so until eternity.

> I don’t think the child of a US citizen should be deported without consent of their citizen parent or a ruling against that parent.

Think it should depend on custody. US courts don't just always favor the custody of the citizen parent.

Unfortunately, if this follows history, the safest thing to do is to not do anything, blend in, and wait for external help. Afaik, only a handful of Germans who resisted survived. But, I don’t see any help for us coming anytime soon.

>Managing mass incarceration and deportation is a difficult task however, and these people (both then and now) are not exactly competent at anything beyond bravado.

The holocaust also required mass incarceration and deportation, except that the huge undertaking of deportation was towards death camps in occupied territories instead of some foreign land. On the first point above, I caution against thinking that it would be much easier; it wasn't really, they just decided that they wanted to kill the people they considered undesirable after all.

On the second point, it's worth noting that the efforts at expulsion partly failed because many other countries, despite knowing of the brutal repression being suffered by the jews (and others but the jews in particular) decided to stonewall most avenues of exit from Nazi domains. Deportation would have still been terrible, but at least it would have put millions of eventual victims outside the reach of gas chambers and death squads. Such as it was, a sort of tacit complicity of indifference didn't allow that to happen, by others who weren't even necessarily supporters of the Nazis.

In either case, be careful about calling evil people practicing evil ends incompetent. In so many ways they were very competent at far more than simple bravado, and underestimating the capabilities of barbaric monsters is always dangerous for future lessons.

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The end goal was world domination, as in owning whole world. So, they would eventually come to Madagascar too.

Majority of Jews killed in Hocaust were not Germans. They were from conquered countries.

So, while there was some Madagascar plans floating and while they tried to deport as many German Jews (majority of who were atheists, considered themselves Germans etc) in first stages, they were aware there is going to be showdown later on anyway.

I had a friend until recently. Really nice guy. Always looking out for people. Never said a bad word. In the last couple of years he turned into a nasty piece of work jumping on every politicised story out there and treating it as gospel. He alienated everyone around him.

It turns out that some people don't have a mind of their own and are waiting for orders.

Here is no exception. Look at the foaming at the mouth praise of the second coming of Microsoft when Satya took over. And where we are now? Look at the hype as well - blockchain, crypto and AI now. Mindless people slithering all over everything.

In fact I find a lot of the people in the technology sector to either be entirely morally bankrupt or lack any kind of self or societal awareness of their speech of actions. It disgusts me. I've been on HN pretty much since day one but the accounts last perhaps 6 months before I tire of it.

I moved out of the tech-first industry about 10 years ago and into a position of tech as a tool not a reason for a business existing and there are better people here.

> LE personnel would have to get insurance, like doctors, which would be crazy expensive and, considering their pay scale, unaffordable.

So pay would have to go up?

There'd probably also have to be something where if they were following department policy, then the officer (well, their insurance) can turn around and demand reimbursement from the department.

Yet other countries get by just fine without giving law enforcement qualified immunity. See Canada for example.

Your solution is what qualified immunity prevents.

Qualified immunity, as it is today, is far too broad. Because literally any action that an officer takes that has not been specifically ruled on by the courts is a defaulted as being immune to prosecution. Even when that officer is knowingly violating department policy even when they're reasonably aware they are a violating the law. They still retain qualified immunity.

It's nice to live in that dreamland that we can resort to criminal prosecutions for officers who violate the law that does not happen as often as it should. As part of their job, what they are trained to do, is to be able to evaluate a reasonable suspicion and probable cause. Yet you regularly see officers violate those standards with impunity. The problem is when someone violates your rights by arresting you without sufficient probable cause there is nearly no recourse for the average person.

If immigration took you and held you for 2 weeks, how disruptive would that be to your life? Would you lose your house, your job, more than that? If it was found that they had no probable cause to for an arrest what realistic legal recourse do you have, and how many years would it take for that recourse?

So if you want to maintain qualified immunity because you believe it's a requirement for these people to do their jobs then where is the balance to that? Because right now there is no balance. If you don't want officers to be held directly responsible or to have to pay for expensive insurance policies somebody needs to pay because without a financial incentive things don't change. What about something that puts a strict financial incentive on getting things right at the first time. Obviously this would be a burden that the taxpayers share but when the taxpayers realize they're shelling out money for people who are not diligent in their work that will change very quickly. If someone is arrested and the courts find there was no probable cause for the arrest. How about $10,000 a day for every day that that person was held. That puts a meaningful financial burden on getting it right. Because then it becomes readily apparent which officers are problematic and which ones are not.

The situation we're in right now is not working and there doesn't seem to be any plans to fix it. Because literally my friend where there is no probable cause for them to be arrested and held by immigration is being held by immigration. Like most people they live month to month. So if they're not working nobody pays their bills nobody pays for their apartment. If they're held for 2 weeks or a month or God forbid even longer before they're let go where is the actual financial recourse because they lost everything in their life? Because your suggestion doesn't solve for that problem and provides no incentive for immigration to follow the laws or even follow the courts.

Because the interesting thing is with the original arrest they would have been released the next day on their own recognizance. Police that do not care about the constitutions or due process or the rights of individuals proactively contacted immigration and immigration requested that she be turned over to them. No reason given and there's no reason for the police to have suspected that a person with all the proper documentation and identification is in violation of any federal immigration law. So tell me honestly what is your solution if it's not to strip away qualified immunity and if it's not to place a heavy financial burden on these agencies in some way that directs back to the individuals that are willfully violating people's rights?

Scotland doesn't have the concept but we still have police officers. I think England is the same.

You can't really claim that something is absolutely necessary when there are countries that don't have it.

Except it’s not, because it’s not the parents but “a parent” being deported, and b) was phrased fallaciously to imply the child would be left alone without legal care givers.

What about the threat of jail? Is the US punitive system not effective? In many ways I'd rather be an immigrant than a citizen if the punishment for crimes is deportation rather than detention... as long as I'm not being sent to country that has also suspended their constitutional right to due process.

You have misunderstood what it means to follow the law. The law guarantees liberties, but doesn't guarantee prosecution. Obama has DACA, which gives young illegal immigrants a deferral on their prosecution. More generally there's the concept of prosecutorial discretion. Have you ever for example driven a car badly, been pulled over, but the cop let you off with just a warning?

E was what notable bleeding heart… Ronald Reagan chose during his time in office.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Contr...

Nah, lies, propaganda, and an incoherent strategy for Biden leading to limited window with Harris lost the last election.

There was a perfectly cromulent immigration plan ready to be voted on by Congress before Trump threw a tantrum because it would have hurt his election chances.

A tangent, but a welcome one for sure! NIMBYism has led to some pretty terrible outcomes. I recommend giving the work of the StrongTowns organization a read for a critical review of current policy and upcoming issues associated with it, as well as reasonable recommendations for how we can make stronger communities.

Best data I can find says it's been on the order of >50 <100 per year over the last ~30 years. Which seems relatively reasonable given the size the denominator. Wrongly deporting legal residents and citizens is obviously awful but there is no such thing as a perfect process.

I know, right? The incompetence is mind blowing. At least they stopped letting people in, but they'll never reach their stated goals. To be fair though 'due process' via a hearing isn't that common in deportations in this country.

"The Obama administration has prioritized speed over fairness in the removal system, sacrificing individualized due process in the pursuit of record removal numbers.

A deportation system that herds 75 percent of people through fast-track, streamlined removal is a system devoid of fairness and individualized due process."[1]

3/4 of Obama era deportations were 'nonjudicial removals' meaning that there was no hearing in front of an immigration judge before removal. People just didn't care as much then I suppose.

[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/speed-over-fairn...

The reports of no due process or little to no due process for citizens[1], that is the main point to my understanding. Due process for [1] would at least include making sure the proper documentation was in order so they could easily return in the future, making sure any health care needs could be meet in Honduras or any other critical needs, (not all the details are in but) the father in [1] wanted the child to stay in the US, but they were deported anyway.

I am not seeing all the details I want, but given the reports of 4 year olds having to defend themselves without representation it is easy to believe these reports of no or little due process for child citizens.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/25/us-citizen-deportat...

What does this "had to" mean? Was it "forced to" or was it "chose to"? Seems like the former.

You are correct. People watch too much TV and think this is out of the ordinary. If the children were kept here we'd be weeping about kids being separated from their parents.

> here illegally

I have to wonder what horrors and shames ones pathway of life must have taken to think a person existing in a space is summarizable as illegal. A person cannot be illegal. They cannot exist in a space illegally. They could enter a space illegally. They could be unauthorized to be in a space. But by simple fact that they exist in the world, if the law makes them illegal to exist, then that law is unjust and should be considered void ab initio based on the very few common similarities among coherent moral frameworks.

From a practical perspective, as parents and tutelaries of children who have citizenship, they should be allowed to stay as guardians and join the US society. We have so many who thumb their nose at culture in the US, whether the right wanting to commit genocide against the outgroup under the guise of MAGA or the left self-shaming because they know the US can be morally better, but of all people, immigrants, especially undocumented and unauthorized immigrants who risk everything and worked outside standard pathways just for the chance to be at the periphery of US society, vulnerable to the predators and outlaws that inhabit that domain, they should be given extraordinary respect and consideration -- which is what we grant all persons who are in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction (which is geographically defined).

From the way things are going now, the previous administration had a perfectly able president.