The U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, clarified this Sunday that the three American citizen children mentioned in recent reports were not deported, but rather voluntarily accompanied their mothers, who were expelled from the country due to their irregular immigration status.
Rubio made these statements in an interview broadcasted by the official account Rapid Response 47 on X, where he criticized what he described as a new "fake news" driven by certain media sectors.
"Regarding the headline, it is misleading. Three American citizens, aged four, seven, and two, were not deported. Their mothers, who were illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers," Rubio stated.
The Secretary of State emphasized that minors, as American citizens, have the right to stay in the country or return at any time, depending on their families' decisions: "Parents make that decision," he stressed.
Rubio refuted the narrative that federal agents had separated or forcibly deported children.
"It's not how you present it, as if ICE agents had kicked down a door, grabbed a two-year-old child, and thrown him onto a plane. That's not true," he said.
When asked about the current immigration policy regarding citizen children, Rubio explained that when an adult is deported, they can choose to take their children with them or allow them to remain in the United States under the care of other family members.
"If we did not allow children to travel with their parents, the headlines would say that the United States is holding citizen children as hostages," he noted.
Rubio recalled that it is the responsibility of each family to decide where the minors will stay.
"The children go with their parents. The parents decide where their children go," concluded Rubio, once again refuting reports that tried to misrepresent the situation.
Despite the statements from the Secretary of State, a federal investigation was opened after a two-year-old girl, a U.S. citizen, was deported to Honduras along with her mother without apparently receiving an adequate legal process.
The case involves a minor identified as VML, born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on January 4, 2023. The girl was deported on Friday along with her mother, who is Honduran and had received a deportation order, according to court documents accessed by NBC News.
On the other hand, last March, a 10-year-old American girl recovering from brain cancer was deported to Mexico along with her family, after being detained at an immigration checkpoint in Texas the previous month.
Authorities arrested the undocumented parents of the little girl, who were traveling from Rio Grande, Texas, to Houston for her medical check-up. The group included four other children, of whom only one was not born in the United States.
However, recently President Donald Trump raised the possibility of deporting U.S. citizens deemed violent offenders, an idea that has raised alarm in legal and human rights circles due to its potential unconstitutionality.
During a meeting in the Oval Office with the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, Trump stated:
"I would like to take it a step further. I told Pam [Bondi, Attorney General], I don't know what the laws are; we always have to obey the laws. But we also have homegrown criminals who push people in the subway, who hit elderly women in the back of the head with a baseball bat when they aren't watching, who are absolute monsters."
Frequently Asked Questions About the Deportation of American Citizen Children
Were the American citizen children who accompanied their mothers deported?
No, the children who are U.S. citizens were not deported. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State of the United States, clarified that the minors accompanied their mothers, who were indeed deported due to their irregular immigration status. The children have the right to remain in the country or return at any time, according to their families' decisions.
Is it true that federal agents separated children from their families during deportations?
No, according to Marco Rubio, federal agents did not separate children from their families or deport them forcibly. The Secretary of State criticized the "fake news" that suggested that ICE agents had acted aggressively in this matter. According to Rubio, it is the parents who decide whether the children accompany their deported mothers or remain in the United States.
What options do families have when one parent is deported but the children are citizens?
Families can decide whether their U.S. citizen children stay in the United States under the care of other relatives or accompany their deported parents. Marco Rubio explained that the decision regarding the children's fate lies with the parents or legal guardians, and that the government respects this choice.
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