Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the recent deportation of U.S.-born children to illegal immigrant mothers on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
Three children from at least two different families were deported with their mothers this last week. Rubio took issue with the reporting on their cases.
“On the headline, that’s a misleading headline. Three U.S. citizens, ages four, seven, and two were not deported. Their mothers, who were illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers,” Rubio said. “You guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the two-year-old and threw them on an airplane. That’s misleading. That’s just not true.”
Rubio made it clear that these children still have the opportunity to “come back to their father or someone who wants to assume them.”
“Again, if someone is in this country unlawfully, illegally, that person gets deported. If that person is with a two-year-old child or has a two-year-old child and says I want to take my child with me, then you have two choices. You can say yes, of course, you can take your child whether they’re a citizen or not because it’s your child, or say yes, you can go, but your child must stay behind. And then your headlines would read: ‘U.S. holding hostage 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 7-year-old while mother deported.’ So the parents make that choice,” Rubio said. “That’s up to the families to decide where the children go. Children go with their parents.”
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At least one girl, referred to in court documents as V.M.L., has a father who is a U.S. citizen who attempted to petition a judge to let the child stay with him rather than go to Honduras with her mother. He was unsuccessful due to the timeline between her apprehension by ICE officers and ultimate deportation, which happened last week.
According to the ACLU, all the children’s cases demonstrate “due process concerns.”
