The latest victims of Donald Trump and his ‘border czar’ Tom Homan are the family of Denisse Parra Vargas and her husband Omar along with their three children aged 9, 5 and 4 years.
While the two younger boys of the couple are legal US citizens, that did not stop the troopers from turning over Vargas and Omar to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as suspected undocumented immigrants.
The situation is not really surprising as Homan had made his stance clear on this issue to CBS News’ Face the Nation, saying, “Having a U.S. citizen child after you enter this country illegally is not a get out jail free card.” As Daily Beast reported, “The father was sent to an ICE detention center then deported to Nuevo Laredo in Mexico, just across the border from Laredo, Texas.”
The mother, on the other hand, was released after she was being fitted with an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet by the ICE Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). She was also asked to check in at the Pflugerville processing center.
A spokesperson for Grassroots Leadership, an Austin-based criminal justice and immigration advocacy group, talked about the case to Daily Beast, saying, “She was told that if she showed up, then she would be eligible for asylum as well as a work permit. Her understanding was that this was supposed to be a routine appointment. It was not a threat.”
Unfortunately, the mother and her kids then just disappeared into the latest immigration system of the Trump administration and Grassroots Leadership kept trying to locate them. Then on Wednesday, Vargas called them and the spokesperson mentioned, “When she called from the other side of the border, she said that she signed a paper, but she wasn’t sure exactly what it was. She did not understand what she was signing.”
If she had a chance to contact the legal team, she would have been advised better as “her younger two children could not be deported if she chose to place them with a responsible caretaker.”
However, as the spokesperson said, “She never had a chance to consult with anybody. Any efforts from our end to be able to advocate for her release, or even for our legal team to be able to work on her release, none of that was possible because we weren’t even able to locate her.”
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Similar instances had occurred in the past when a four years old US citizen child metastatic cancer was deported to Honduras along with another seven years old. Another deportee of only two months of age, who was also a US citizen, got deported last month.
If the couple had renewed their tags on time, they would not have been in this situation. The Grassroots Leadership spokesperson further said, “Both of them are loving parents. They have their three kids, and they’re just trying to live their lives here in Austin.”
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He also added, “They were taken from their home, without the chance for them to even grab any of their belongings, like any toys, any clothes, anything that they might need for their day-to-day lives. They don’t have any of that, and that’s just including the material possessions. There’s also the long term psychological damage.
The Grassroots Leadership is still looking for ways to help the family as the kids who have been sent away as immigrants will grow up to be adult immigrants, a situation that is even more disastrous.
