May 9, 2025
ICE Is Deporting Children With U.S. CITIZENSHIP
Multiple reports are emerging of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deporting children with U.S. citizenship.
- 6 minutes
The country legally.
And you know you're here legally and you
choose to have your child that's on you,
that's not on this administration.
If you choose to put your family
in that position, that's on them.
But having a U.S.
Citizen child
after you enter this country legally
is not a get out of jail free card.
It doesn't make you immune from our laws.
[00:00:17]
After Tom Homan denied last month
deporting two U.S.
Children with their mother back
to Honduras, a new report from The
Daily Beast reveals another case of U.S.
Citizen children being deported.
This from The Daily Beast Denise
Parra Vargas and her husband Omar,
[00:00:33]
had just dropped their three children,
aged nine, five and four,
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.
To clarify, the Daily Beast report
did not state the legal status
[00:00:52]
of Denise Omar or their oldest child.
However, their two youngest children,
both boys, are born in the Or.
They were born in the United States.
When the parents were pulled over again
because of simply an expired
license plate, the Texas State Troopers
turned in the two children to Ice
[00:01:10]
as suspected undocumented immigrants.
The father was sent
to an Ice detention center, then deported
to to Nuevo Laredo in Mexico,
just across the border from Laredo, Texas.
The mother was released after being fitted
with an electronic monitoring ankle
[00:01:27]
bracelet by the Ice Intensive Supervision
Appearance Program, or Isep.
Para Vargas was told to check
into the Pflugerville Processing Center,
where she'd be eligible for asylum
and a work permit.
But after she appeared alongside her kids,
they all vanished.
[00:01:45]
According to a spokesperson
for Grassroots Leadership,
an Austin based criminal justice
and immigration advocacy advocacy group.
Her understanding was that this was
supposed to be a routine appointment.
It was not a threat.
Grassroots was unable to find
where she was
[00:02:02]
until she called early Wednesday afternoon
to say she had been deported to Reynosa.
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.
She never had a chance to consult
with anybody, any efforts from our end
[00:02:19]
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.
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 might need, that they might
[00:02:37]
need for their day to day lives.
They don't have any of that, and that's
just including the material possessions.
There also is the long term
psychological damage.
Yeah. So I think the psychological damage.
I'm so glad that they mentioned that,
because a lot of times
[00:02:54]
whenever we discuss these stories,
you think about the legality of it,
and it is very easy to overlook
the human aspect to these stories.
This is a life, a small life,
a young life that is being so disrupted
in such a way that even if they end up
back in the United States,
[00:03:09]
who's going to take care of them?
All these things, right?
Their very stability.
Right.
That bottom tier
of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Right.
All of that is disrupted and it's going
to take a lifetime to overcome.
Right?
I think people underestimate how damaging
these type of situations can be,
[00:03:27]
how traumatizing they can be to witness.
And I've never experienced
anything like that.
This is just empathy, right?
Which I'm told is not a good thing
to have these days anymore.
But I can't imagine expecting a child
to go through something like this
and then being like, oh my bad.
Well, if it comes to that, right.
So everything going on right now,
there's so much uncertainty.
[00:03:46]
People don't know how to plan their lives.
People don't know how to live their lives.
Right.
Something that you thought
was just a routine thing.
You know, you got to, you know, expired
license plate, whatever it was fine.
You get it fixed.
But next thing you know, your whole family
and your whole life is upturned
[00:04:02]
and you know you're dealing
with something that's so topical,
but nobody really knows what's going on
because it's so unfamiliar.
Sharon, let's start with you.
What do you make of this?
Well, I think that that again,
we've heard it said time and time again,
cruelty is the point.
And when you have basically zero,
you really can't have due process.
[00:04:21]
Not if you want to do things the way
the Trump administration wants to do them.
I mean, if the federal government
wants you, they can get you.
There's no need to pile on with the lack
of due process even a little bit.
It's just no need for this.
But that is the point.
[00:04:37]
That is exactly what they want to do here.
And you know, I've seen it happen
just in other years.
Just being a reporter where, you know,
oh, we're having a gun buyback,
cash for your guns.
And the next thing you know, people show
up and they want to turn in a gun and get
$100 gift card, and they're arrested
because it was really a warrant sweep.
[00:04:56]
We just didn't feel like going
to everyone's home to pick them up.
Maybe that's perfectly legal,
but that's not.
I mean, that's not exactly
what's going on here.
It's far worse. It's far more invasive.
And when you're dealing
with American citizens, like two, at least
of the children are, it's heartbreaking.
[00:05:14]
It's gut wrenching.
But in order to have empathy,
you have to see them as human.
And I don't believe you're able
to carry out some of this stuff
if you believe they're human.
Yeah, you have to.
You have to completely
break from from all of that.
[00:05:29]
You have to separate yourself
emotionally for it from that
or that part of you just never existed.
All right. What are your thoughts?
Was.
Oh, just to echo what Sharon was saying
about the cruelty being the point,
in this case, like,
it's explicitly is like we know
that Stephen Miller part of the policy is
[00:05:48]
that they need a certain amount
of quote unquote, self deportations.
So they have to advertise
some of the most cruelest and grotesque,
visions for deporting folks
that they could possibly come up with
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so that people hear about it
and either leave on their own or end
up not coming at all in the first place.
Because we know Obama did plenty
of legal deportations on his own.
Biden did plenty
of legal deportations on his own.
[00:06:20]
And Trump right now,
he's net less deportations than Joe Biden.
This guy promised mass deportation.
He knows he's not delivering on this.
So they have to advertise
the most disgusting and ghoulish elements
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of their deportation regime.
- It's a joke.
- It's very sad to see.
It's very it's it's scary
because it's so it's so unreal.
You know, you can't even wrap your
head around some of the things
that they're coming up with, because what
kind of normal person would even think
to do most of this stuff, right?
[00:06:51]
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