ACLU drops lawsuit over alleged child citizen deportations

Over the last few weeks, the media stirred up a hornet's nest, claiming that the Trump administration had deported child citizens.

The ACLU then filed a suit, which was just dropped, with the administration calling it “baseless.”

Deporting children

One of the problems with today’s media is that it cherry-picks the facts to push a narrative. In this case, it was that the administration was deporting child citizens.

White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López reported, "So, in one of the cases, it's two U.S. citizen siblings, a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old, who were deported with their undocumented mother to Honduras within 24 hours after being detained.

“And that 4-year-old is a boy who has late-stage cancer and he had no medication with him. The undocumented mother of these two children had a removal order for not appearing at a hearing shortly after she came to the United States as an unaccompanied minor years ago. She was not aware of that removal order.

“Now, in the other case, the third child is a 2-year-old girl who was referred to in court filings with the initials VML. She was also deported to Honduras with her mother. That 2-year-old is a U.S. citizen and they were deported roughly three days — after being held for three days in detention.”

The ACLU

The ACLU immediately took an interest in the case, making headlines by saying the administration had wrongly deported these children.

In the post on its website, the ACLU, in part, stated, “Today, in the early hours of the morning, the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office deported at least two families, including two mothers and their minor children – three of whom are U.S. citizen children aged 2, 4, and 7.

“One of the mothers is currently pregnant. The families, who had lived in the United States for years and had deep ties to their communities, were deported from the U.S. under deeply troubling circumstances that raise serious due process concerns.”

The ACLU and the media seemed to forget one key fact, and that was that the mothers could have left the children here with relatives or a guardian, but they chose to take their children with them.

Lawsuit dropped

It did not take too long for the case to fall apart, and without much fanfare, the ACLU dropped its case this week.

DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLauglin announced, “The ACLU dropped its lawsuit on the false claims that DHS deported a U.S. citizen.

“The truth is, and has always been, that the mother—who was in the country illegally—chose to bring her 2-year-old with her to Honduras when she was removed. The narrative that DHS is deporting American children is false and irresponsible.”

This is one of the issues that Trump is trying to resolve with his birthright executive order, and while I believe the order will fail in the courts, I think it is a great issue for Congress to take up, as these births lead to chain migration as well as being a business model for cartels and human traffickers. Any child born of an illegal immigrant has no right to citizenship… at least in my opinion.