ICE Just Deported Two More US Citizen Children

In recent weeks, immigration agents acting on the Trump administration's orders have alarmed rights advocates by deporting multiple U.S. citizen children and entrapping a person marked for deportation by asking him to attend an official immigration-related appointment—and this week, advocacy groups said Thursday, a family in Texas was subjected to both actions once again.

The Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and Grassroots Leadership said they were not able to confirm the whereabouts of three children aged 9, 5, and 4—the youngest two of whom are U.S. citizens born and raised in Austin, Texas—after they were deported to Mexico with their mother, Denisse Parra Vargas.

Parra Vargas and her partner, Omar Gallardo Rodríguez, were stopped on April 30 by the Texas Department of Public Safety in Austin, when authorities saw they were driving a truck with expired license plates. DPS contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when it found the couple did not have legal status in the United States, and Gallardo Rodríguez was deported days later.

Authorities gave Parra Vargas an ankle monitor to wear and told to visit an Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) office to check in with ICE agents.

"ICE has no authority to detain or deport U.S. citizens regardless of the status of their parents."

According to the advocacy groups, ICE told her if she attended all her ISAP appointments she would be eligible for a work permit. Parra Vargas was also told to attend a hearing for Gallardo Rodríguez at an ICE facility on May 6.

"But her partner had no hearing and instead she and her minor children were detained, including two U.S. citizen children," said the groups.

The family was taken to a facility in Laredo before being deported and sent to the border city of Reynosa, Mexico, where they were at a shelter as of Wednesday.

Daniel Hatoum, an attorney with TCRP, told the Austin American-Statesman that in cases like that of Parra Vargas and her children, "they basically tell the family: 'Either take them with you or we're going to separate them quickly from you.' They then claim that's not really a deportation because they were given the option of going. But it certainly is in a colloquial sense."

The advocacy groups said that while ICE may claim it gave Parra Vargas the "choice" to leave her young children in the U.S., the agency "did not allow for communication with nearby family members who were willing to keep the children and instead detained them for 24 hours in secretive locations before deporting the U.S. citizen children to Mexico."

"ICE was informed by the family and legal advocates that the children were U.S. citizens and ICE knowingly deported them anyway in violation of their own policies and laws," said the groups. "ICE has no authority to detain or deport U.S. citizens regardless of the status of their parents."

The organizations said they were not able to communicate with Parra Vargas when she was in detention in order to provide her with legal counsel.

The family's deportation comes weeks after an ICE field office in New Orleans deported three American children—aged 2, 4, and 7—including one who has a rare cancer.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed in a statement to the American-Statesman that "the narrative that DHS is deporting American children is false and irresponsible reporting."

But U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said the facts show that "two children with U.S. citizenship—born and raised in Austin—were just detained and deported to Mexico."

Sulma Franco, who works with Grassroots Leadership, told the American-Statesman that the parents "were people who were doing all that they could to provide for their families, responsibly, without trouble."

Carlos Enrique González Echeverría at the Mexican Consulate in Austin told the newspaper that Parra Vargas had a deportation order from 2019, when she didn't appear at an immigration court hearing. She was denied asylum in 2016 when she applied at the U.S.-Mexico border after traveling to the U.S. to escape her abusive former partner.

TCRP, which is representing the family, said Thursday that "there are no confirmed details about the whereabouts or welfare of her children" following their deportation to Mexico.