I am reading “potential citizen” as “a detainee who claims to be an American citizen whose citizenship status was not ascertained.” The article doesn’t really give a good indication of if these cases had any merit. Since officers are supposed to stop the interview if they believe the individual is a US citizen, I suspect that these deportations were warranted. Law enforcement can get things wrong, but in this case, I haven’t heard of any documented instances where this has happened.

> Wikipedia has a good round of sources for the recent removals of US children:

This article cites two examples, and in both instances the parents were residing in the country illegally with children who were not even in grade school yet. Jus Soli leads to all kinds of absurdities like this. The idea that a 2 year old being sent back to his mother’s country of origin is comparable to “American citizens being deported” is farcical; it’s technically true, but completely misleading. The people making these claims intend to frighten the audience into believing that regular immigration enforcement actions like these are somehow comparable to kidnapping people off of the street.