Trump administration immigration agents have detained or arrested more than 170 U.S. citizens since the president took office, including nearly 20 children, two of whom have cancer, according to a new analysis.
The government does not officially tally this statistic, but scores of U.S. citizens have been caught up in the crackdown, a ProPublica investigation found.
In February, a 10-year-old who was being treated for brain cancer was deported to Mexico alongside four of her American siblings and her two parents, who are both undocumented.
The family was stopped that month in Texas at an immigration checkpoint as they headed towards Houston, where the 10-year-old’s specialist doctors live. Previously, letters from their doctors and lawyers had allowed them to pass through such checkpoints, but immigration officers refused to let them go this time.
Her mother told NBC News that the family was temporarily split in the U.S. detention system, and the sick young girl was made to lie on a cold floor beneath incandescent lights as she awaited deportation.
“The fear is horrible. I almost can’t explain it, but it’s something frustrating, very tough, something you wouldn’t wish on anyone,” she told the broadcaster.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol declines to speak on the specifics of cases out of privacy concerns, but the agency has said descriptions of this case are “inaccurate” and that those who are given expedited removal orders “will face the consequences.”
In late April, another mixed-status family that included an ill American citizen child was removed from the country.
On April 25, the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office removed at least two families and their minor children, three of whom are U.S. children aged two, four, and seven, according to the Louisiana ACLU.
The families were all arrested less then a week prior and held “incommunicado” from family members and legal counsel on the outside, according to civli rights groups.
A four-year-old U.S. citizen in one of the families with a rare form of metastatic cancer in the kidneys was deported without medication or the ability to consult with their doctors, even though ICE was notified of the child’s medical needs, per the ACLU.
The families sued ICE in August, alleging the agency failed to follow its procedures by denying the families due process and keeping them at undisclosed locations before removing them from the country, keeping their parents from securing adequate care for the children in the U.S.
“ICE has a policy for what they’re supposed to do in these instances, and they most certainly did not follow that policy,” Stephanie Alvarez-Jones, who is representing one of the families, told The Louisiana Illuminator that month.
The government has yet to respond to the suit, which was temporarily delayed by the government shutdown.
The Department of Homeland Security said in April both mothers had final orders of deportation and voluntarily chose to bring the children with them back to Honduras.
The agency has continued to dispute reporting about the impact of immigration raids on U.S. citizens as “fake news.”
“We have said it a million times: DHS enforcement operations are HIGHLY TARGETED and are not resulting in the arrest of U.S. citizens,” DHS wrote in a statement on Thursday on X.
We do our due diligence. We know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability.”
Immigration officials can legally detain U.S. citizens if they initially had reason to suspect they were in the country illegally, or if Americans are accused of assaulting officers, or interfering with their operations.
