This in no way excuses any of the other issues like not allowing contact with legal advocates / attorneys.
> ICE held the families incommunicado, refusing or failing to respond to multiple attempts by attorneys and family members to contact them. In one instance, a mother was granted less than one minute on the phone before the call was abruptly terminated when her spouse tried to provide legal counsel’s phone number.
What would they do, leave their child in an ICE facility and hope that somehow word gets back to family to go get them?
The mother was also technically able to speak with the father, though monitored, for less than a minute, and they were interrupted when the father attempted to give a number for the attorney to the mother.
To be clear, I'm not defending any of ICEs actions here, I'm saying that they kidnapped this child who had arrangements made to remain in the US despite ICEs best (also almost certainly illegal) attempts to prevent that from happening.
I am arguing by pointing to the most clear and egregious violation of the law and human rights, that isn't meant to excuse any other violations.
I am not asserting that ICE followed any of the parents decisions, so I don't see that I could have possibly accidentally implied that ICEs actions were ok because they made the parents make an impossible choice and then followed it.
Based on your wording alone, would it be safe to say the mother was unable to avail herself of counsel before making a decision?
We only really have the father's and judge's account of events here.
Given that, then this whole thread is pointless. I just assumed people were more informed based on what they’re claiming.
And this is actually one of the many things that this executive doesn't seem to grasp about the fundamentals of how this England-inherited, American-modified government functions. Due process doesn't just protect the people. It protects the king from rumors abounding about his tyranny that eventually lead to his beheading, because if there is no record to show then there is no record to justify the actions of the crown either.
The Magna Carta has stood for about a thousand years. But it has stood because every monarch who tried to place themselves above it found themselves much shorter by the end of their reign.
Right a lack of records is itself an indicator due-process wasn't provided.
So in this case, a common saying does not apply: Absence of evidence is evidence of absence!
It gets tricky when a deportation is completed before a court can hear the case. Attempting to prevent a detainee from communicating their location and situation to someone who could bring a legal action on their behalf doesn't appear to be explicitly illegal, but it's certainly an attempt to subvert due process and probably ought to be illegal.
It’s interesting how the administration always talks about these people being here illegally and that they’re all criminals but then leverages the non-criminal aspect of the proceedings to their advantage.
"Leave your 2-year-old with the angry government man who will totes ensure they are reunited with your spouse" is not a choice that exists.
[0] https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/16/us-lasting-harm-family-s...
This is what ICE alleges. They're a uniquely uncredible witness among government agencies [1][2].
A judge found the father's allegations worthy of meriting "strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process," an act which is itself illegal [3]. That is far more credible.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/court-cases?issue=ice-and-border-patrol...
[2] https://apnews.com/article/ice-immigration-arrest-trial-cont...
[3] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.21...
The actions by ICE in this and other cases are beyond defensible. If they have a case, let it be heard in open court with adequate counsel. Stop playing the silly reindeer games with people's lives.
That would be one way to make America great again.
Being right handed, you choose your left, and he lops it off.
Was it really your choice to have your left hand cut off?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/us-citizen-de...
A post elsewhere about the details said ICE found the two-year old was unable to 'describe her status in full, intelligible sentences', so deported, even though her father (not deported and not consenting to his child's expulsion) wanted her left with him.
From my experience with two-tear olds, I guess ICE was technically correct.
edit - typo
The father explicitly did not want the child deported with the mother, had informed ICE of that, and initiated legal proceedings to that effect [1].
The mother and US citizen child were held largely incommunicado. They were not given access to a lawyer, and communication with the father was monitored, and upon the father attempting to give them the phone number for an attorney the phone was taken from the mother. Then promptly put on a flight out of the country
When a judge attempted to contact the mother, while the mother and child were still in US custody: The US did not respond for an hour presumably so that it could remove the mother and child from US custody prior to responding.
> The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the Court doesn’t know that. [2]
And that's a quote from the Trump appointed very Trump leaning [3] judge.
All actual evidence we have here is that the child was intentionally deported (expelled?) against the parents wishes. Certainly against one of the parents wishes.
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.21...
[2] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.21...
[3] See prior rulings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Doughty#Notable_rulin...
(Also not true, but that's besides the point)
Or at least that is what some reports say. It’s confusing. Fortunately we have a system to due process to figure these issues out.
Unfortunately the current regime has decided that all due process is subject to their discretion.
That's also not actually true. Mothers tend to get custody because both parties are more likely to agree to give them custody (or the father is more likely to cede custody).
If it comes to an actual legal battle, fathers are actually more likely to win custody than mothers.
Yet here they are deliberately moving a child internationally against the express wishes of at least one of the parents.
Are you suggesting we never deport parents under any circumstance? Having a citizen child is not some get-out-deportation-free card.
> Entering the United States illegally is not classified as a civil offense; it is a criminal offense. Under U.S. law, specifically under Title 8 of the U.S. Code, unauthorized entry into the country is considered a misdemeanor. The specific statute is 8 U.S.C. § 1325
The real solution to this is to end jus solis.
Separating children from parents is incredibly cruel, inhumane, even.
No, that's a step down a terrible return to pre-Civil War policy. We should be actively fighting against enslavement and for due process, not throwing our hands up and saying "well, guess we can't [bring them back from El Salvador, have a sane policy with respect to families, have people's rights to citizenship and legal residence respected]".
I have nothing to gain from the US devolving from a democracy, but you're headed that way.
So is their life forfeit now, and the respective goverment absolved of responsibility?
PDF: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.21...
But ICE hid the evidence and prevented the courts from looking into it.
Alternatives include arranging legal custody for the child and to stay in the US with a relative (as one family was attempting), or finding a legal way for them to leave the country with their parents.
Instead, it seems the government is rushing to illegally remove these children before the courts can intervene
That's the last 4 months really.
But ideally we wouldn't be making them orphans.
There ya go, the humane solution to this.
Jus solis is a bit like right of way at American intersections: the person that's been there the longest goes first. Whaaaaaa? What if two cars arrive at the same time? What if 4 arrive at roughly at the same time? What is people can't agree who arrived first? A lot of the rest of the world gives way to the car coming from the right. Which is obvious and basically non-negotiable.
Similar idea here.
All this status quo is doing is creating all sort of gray area cruelty. Just be open about it, become anti-immigration, but make it fair. The US is basically the only developed Western country that I know of where you don't even have fixed time frame to become a citizen. In the EU + CANZUK if you live lawfully in a country you become a citizen in N years. The N is well known ahead of time.
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
All people in the US are subject to the jurisdiction of the US (other than some very unusual situation like diplomats and, in the past, some Native American tribes).
You're this <> close from becoming a dictatorship, things could become very silly regardless.
If anything, I'd say Trump is just a silly Sulla. Sulla was somewhat benevolent, he retired. But he paved the way for Caesar and Augustus (people who really meant business, especially Augustus).
If the country turns into a dictatorship, then it is just rule by dictatorial fiat. But in that case this whole conversation is sort of pointless because we wouldn’t have democracy and our opinions about how things should be run wouldn’t matter anymore.
This seems pretty clear to me. How else could you interpret it?
>and subject to the jurisdiction thereof
And if you go back and read what the drafters of that amendment stated they meant on the floor of congress, they did not intend it to mean Jus soli. The idea was so ridiculous at the time that no one thought it worth writing it down. Pity. The controlling Supreme Court case spends a lot of time talking about English Common Law and what "subject to the jurisdiction of the King" meant. It is not hard to believe, at all, that the current SCOTUS may have a different interpretation than "anyone who happens to be born across this line on the map is a US citizen and is granted all rights, responsibilities, and privileges thereof".
Certainly that clause has weight. It excludes diplomats, members of occupying armies, and members of Native tribes. But it seems strange to apply it to others, unless you’re also going to say that they have immunity from our laws as well.
Howard, who introduced the Amendment, said this[1]:
>This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States.
>Now, all this amendment provides is, that all persons born in the United States and not subject to some foreign Power—for that, no doubt, is the meaning of the committee who have brought the matter before us—shall be considered as citizens of the United States ... If there are to be citizens of the United States entitled everywhere to the character of citizens of the United States, there should be some certain definition of what citizenship is, what has created the character of citizen as between himself and the United States, and the amendment says citizenship may depend upon birth, and I know of no better way to give rise to citizenship than the fact of birth within the territory of the United States, born of parents who at the time were subject to the authority of the United States.
Doubly funny that he added a line in that speech where he thinks all ambiguity is gone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_M._Howard#Speech_on_the_...
[2] https://archive.org/details/the-congressional-globe-39th-con...
They were absolutely aware that is what it. Indeed, they stated it outright:
> The proposition before us … relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. … I am in favor of doing so. … We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.
- Senator John Conness (R-CA), May 29, 1866 during Senate debates on citizenship amendment introduced by Senator Jacob Howard (R-MI)
The only real change came when they worried that citizenship would be extended to Indians in tribes we had treaties saying we wouldn't do just that leading to a change that excluded them.
People born in the Germany made up about 3.5% of the US population (1.11 million) in 1860. While they were one of the largest groups, many states/territories had large percentages of other non-British people like California, where 9% of the population was born in China. Then you have territories like New Mexico where most of the population had been born in Mexico.
Regardless, the debates for the 14th Amendment make it absolutely clear they understood they understood a child born to, say, Chinese parents in the US would get citizenship.
Or, in population: 13%.
That seems deliberately Orwellian. What's the "not deported" scenario you're imagining? Literally abandoning your child in a jail somewhere?!
It's not like these folks are in hotels, or have access to phones or family.
I mean, yikes. Is that really what we've come to in the discourse on this site? Putting scare quotes around "deported" to pretend that it's only "other issues" that are problems?
We let it happen by not saying "enough" when the last thing happened. If a school of kids gets gunned down and a society lets that slide, that society becomes one more tolerant of violence against children. We said we were powerless to stop that, so here we are now, bringing violence against children as a matter of federal policy.
The Rawlsian veil ethic applies here.
EDIT: RE - the knee-jerk downvotes. I appreciate that people pointing out authoritarianism can be painful if you are embracing it. Cognitive dissonance is never a fun thing to work through, and having done it a few times I sympathize with the struggles you face or may be facing.