Is the Trump administration deporting American children with cancer?

Three children who are US citizens, including a four-year-old with a rare form of cancer, were deported alongside their mothers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), despite objections from legal groups in the United States.

A federal judge also raised concern over the Donald Trump administration’s decision to deport a two-year-old US citizen to Honduras, stating that the process lacked “any meaningful review,” even while the child’s father was desperately appealing to the courts to keep her in the country.

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Lawyers involved in these cases explained that the mothers were arrested during routine check-ins at Ice offices, with little chance to consult with legal representatives or speak to their families, before being deported within three days or less.

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In this explainer, we explore why these children and their mothers were deported, the judge’s statement, how officials defended the move, and whether the US has deported more children suffering from cancer.

Why Trump administration deported three US citizen children, including a cancer patient

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated that one of the US citizen children deported from the country has “a rare form of metastatic cancer” and was sent out of the country without access to medication or medical consultations.

“One of the mothers is currently pregnant,” the ACLU added, calling the deportations “illegal and inhumane.”

The ACLU also said that Ice agents kept the families “incommunicado” and failed to allow communication between the mothers and their lawyers.

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The children deported along with their mothers were aged two, four, and seven. Among them, the four-year-old suffers from a rare form of metastatic cancer and was deported without medication or consultation with her treating physicians, even though Ice had been informed of her medical needs, according to the civil rights organisation.

It also mentioned that the mother of the two-year-old is pregnant and was deported without any guarantee of continued prenatal or proper medical care.

Lawyers representing the families said the group was taken to Alexandria, Louisiana, located three hours from New Orleans, where they were denied communication with relatives and legal representatives. They were then put on a flight to Honduras.

Regarding the case of the two-year-old, a federal judge in Louisiana questioned the legality of the deportation, stating that the government had not indicated that the process was handled properly.

The girl’s father had requested that she remain in the US, while Ice argued that the mother wanted to deport the child to Honduras.

Soon after the deportation, US District Judge Terry A Doughty issued a ruling raising concerns that the girl had been sent to Honduras against her father’s wishes. He added that deporting US citizens is “illegal and unconstitutional”.

The Honduran-born mother, who is pregnant, was arrested during a check-in at an Ice office in New Orleans on Tuesday, along with her two-year-old daughter and her 11-year-old daughter, also born in Honduras.

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What did the officials say?

Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s border czar, said that he was not familiar with the details of the case involving the four-year-old US citizen with cancer. However, he rejected the use of the word “deported” to describe the removal of the American children from the country.

“No US citizen child was deported,” Homan was quoted as saying by The Washington Post. “Deported means ordered by an immigration judge.”

He argued that the Trump administration does not deport US citizen children, adding that the mothers may have wanted to take their children with them when they were facing deportation.

He further said that if anyone decides to come to the US without the proper documentation and have a child, “that’s on you, that’s not on this administration.” He added, “Having a child in the United States is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke on the matter. He told NBC News, “Their mothers, who were illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers.”

“If those children are US citizens, they can come back into the United States if there’s their father or someone here who wants to assume them. But ultimately, who was deported was their mother, their mothers who were here illegally. The children just went with their mothers,” he added.

The Washington Post reported that lawyers for the deported mothers claimed that they were not allowed to reach out to their lawyers or family members while in custody in the US.

Rubio called the coverage “misleading”. He told NBC News, “You guys make it sound like Ice agents kicked down the door and grabbed the 2-year-old and threw him on an aeroplane.”

He also defended the broader deportation strategy of the Trump administration, stating that it was a shift from previous US policies that allowed undocumented migrants to stay in the country while their asylum applications were processed.

When US deported 10-year-old American citizen with brain cancer

In February this year, US immigration authorities deported a 10-year-old girl, who was recovering from brain cancer, along with four of her American siblings from Texas.

The 10-year-old had been diagnosed with brain cancer the previous year and had undergone surgery to remove the tumour.

“Doctors practically gave me no hope of life for her, but thank God she’s a miracle,” the mother told NBC News.

Although the tumour was removed, the swelling in the girl’s brain did not fully go down, which still affects her speech and mobility on the right side of her body, she added.

Before the family’s deportation, the girl was regularly seeing doctors to monitor her recovery, attending rehabilitation sessions, and taking medication to prevent seizures.

With inputs from agencies