Five million American children live under the threat of their parents’ deportation

América Pérez Ramírez is one of the millions of undocumented Mexicans living in the United States. Because she lacks legal papers, she has been subject to a deportation order for years, but it hadn’t been enforced because until January the priority was to expel migrants with a criminal record. Last month, after one of her regular appearances before immigration authorities, she was notified that her deportation was imminent. In her case, not only her deportation is at stake, but also the life of her ailing 11-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen who, in order to remain with her mother, her sole caregiver, would also be deported. She is one of the nearly five million American children who live in fear of deportation.

Yoselin Mejía Pérez suffers from a rare genetic disorder known as maple syrup urine disease (MSUD). This condition involves the body’s inability to process certain amino acids, causing a harmful buildup of substances in the blood and urine. According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), “If left untreated, progressive brain damage is inevitable, and death typically occurs within weeks or months.”

According to the doctors treating her in Florida, where they live, if she is sent to Mexico, there’s a good chance she won’t survive, because treatment, which is already difficult to obtain in the United States, is even harder to access in the neighboring country. As a citizen, the child could stay, but she wouldn’t have anyone to care for her, as sources from the Bennett law firm, which is handling her case, confirmed to EL PAÍS. Her mother is the one who oversees her strict diet, follows the formulas prescribed by doctors, and accompanies her to her regular blood tests.

For Pérez Ramírez, separation is impossible, so if she is deported, her daughter will be deported with her. For years, her lawyers have been trying to get use daughter’s illness to postpone her removal, but now the deadline they’ve been given is only the time it takes until Yoselin obtains her passport and can leave the country.

The Trump administration’s relentless deportation campaign, which has evidenced that its purported goal of prioritizing the removal of criminals is not true, is directly and indirectly affecting the most vulnerable segment of the population: children, who suffer from the multi-pronged immigration crackdown. Undocumented children are being added to the list of deportable individuals, even if they have lived in the United States for years and have never known another country. Those who are U.S. citizens but have one or both undocumented parents are at risk of family separation if their parents are deported.

According to a study by Brookings and the Center for Migration Studies, there are 5.62 million U.S. children living with an undocumented household member, representing approximately 8% of the 70.28 million children with U.S. citizenship. These children are considered “at risk” due to the government’s campaign to achieve the largest deportation rate in the country’s history. Of these children, 4.71 million (6.7% of all citizen children) have at least one undocumented parent in the home, and 2.66 million live in households where all members are undocumented, either because both parents are undocumented or because it is a single-parent household.

According to the report, “the psychological effects of parental separation on children are severe and range from an immediate increase in the levels of stress to long-run developmental conditions that could affect health and cognitive and behavioral skills.”

Approximately 60% of undocumented members of at-risk households have lived in the United States for more than 10 years, and most of the children in these households are under 15 years old.

Deported without consent

“There is now an environment that endangers children and parents. Fundamentally, this is family separation,” says Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project. Shebaya is the attorney handling the case of the three U.S. citizen children deported to Honduras last week, which has further highlighted the legality of the methods used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). One of the two-year-old girls was deported with her mother without her consent, the defense claims, despite the fact that her father had initiated legal proceedings to prevent her deportation. The other case involves two children, ages four and seven, also U.S. citizens, who were deported with their mother without her consent. The youngest of the two suffers from stage 4 cancer and was sent to Honduras, , cutting off his treatment and leaving him without medication.

In both cases, the mothers were detained when they showed up for one of their routine appointments with ICE. This time, the immigration service asked them to bring their children and passports. Shebaya claims it was a setup. “These families were detained without warning, denied access to lawyers, and not given the opportunity to make decisions. U.S. citizen children were illegally deported, along with their mothers, in the middle of the night. This is just another example of the policing strategy the government has been adopting for the past 100 days,” she says.

By law, U.S. citizens cannot be deported, and in the case of children of undocumented immigrants, parents must decide whether to take them along or allow them to remain in the United States. In their parents’ home countries, children may lack legal status, not speak the language, and face violence or extreme poverty, leading some parents to believe that the best course of action for their children is to stay behind in the United States.

Due to the media coverage of these cases, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement asserting that due process was being followed. “Once again, the media is shamefully spreading a false narrative in an attempt to demonize our ICE agents, who are already facing a 300% increase in assaults. The media and Democratic politicians are instilling in the public false information that U.S. citizen children are being deported,” it said.

Border czar Tom Homan also spoke out on the matter, contradicting the families and saying that ICE had the mothers’ permission to have their children deported.

Shebaya denies this: “Because they try to fill the planes, they carry out rapid deportations and don’t allow time for the normal procedures to be carried out. There were people from both families willing to take in the children, but they simply weren’t given the opportunity.”

Civil rights organizations denounce how the treatment of migrants and their children has changed since Trump returned to the White House. “Since the election, I have given more than 30 presentations to immigrant communities who contribute every day as workers, entrepreneurs, and caregivers, and who are our neighbors. They are not criminals. They are human beings with hopes, families, and dreams. They love this country and want to build a life here the right way. They deserve dignity, not detention,” notes Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an attorney in Austin, Texas. Among her clients is José, a father of three, married to a U.S. citizen, who recently received a deportation order following a traffic stop, requiring him to leave the country before August.

Unaccompanied minors

Lincoln-Goldfinch has seen Vecina, the organization she co-founded with a project to reunite unaccompanied children with their families, forced to close due to administrative obstacles and a lack of funding. An estimated 1,400 of the approximately 5,000 minors separated during the first Trump administration have still not been reunited with their parents.

Undocumented children who arrived alone at the border have also been the target of the Republican’s anti-immigration crusade. The administration cut off funding to organizations that provided them with legal services, forcing the minors to defend themselves before immigration judges. A judge ordered the resumption of funding, but organizations advocating for them warn of the threat posed by a Republican legislative proposal being debated in the House Judiciary Committee.

Jason Boyd, vice president of federal policy at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), explains that “it explicitly states that any use of funds not stipulated is prohibited. Therefore, not a single dollar of that money can be used for vital legal services, social services, or other critical services that can mean the difference between a child finding safety or being exploited by a trafficker.”

Without an attorney, the 26,000 minors who have legal representation would have to navigate a complicated immigration process alone, leading to surreal cases such as children who cannot even speak (and most of whom do not speak English) who would have to defend their asylum case against an immigration prosecutor. Furthermore, the proposal establishes fees of up to $8,500 to grant custody to sponsors who take the children. Advocates for the children complain that this requirement would prevent reunification with families who cannot afford the fee.

“As someone who sees this every day, I urge the American people and our leaders to choose compassion. Let’s choose common sense. Instead of separating families, let’s focus on keeping them together. Destroying families is not the solution,” says Lincoln-Goldfinch.

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