SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
america's voice
ICE Encounter With Autistic 5-Year-Old Sparks Alarm
"This visceral event is just another frightening example of a broader and deeply disturbing pattern by this administration."
Sep 23, 2025
A video of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with a 5-year-old autistic girl outside her family home in Leominster, Massachusetts generated alarm after it was published Monday by NBCUniversal's Spanish-language Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra.
While Telemundo first reported that the family accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of holding the girl in an effort to pressure her father, 22-year-old Edward Hip Mejía, to surrender to ICE, and the agency initially did not respond to a request for comment, the outlet updated the article on Tuesday, including with a comment from a government spokesperson.
The video from last Tuesday shows the little girl seated outside an open vehicle, drinking from a water bottle while surrounded by law enforcement. A man can be heard shouting "Don't touch her!" and a woman identified as the girl's mother tells one agent that the others took her daughter, who is 5 years old and on the autism spectrum. She also says, "Give me my daughter back."
The mother, who did not want her name shared, told Telemundo that her husband called her while driving with their daughter because he thought they were being followed. Her husband "managed to run back into the parking lot of my house," she said, and her daughter was left with the agents. The video shows agents trying to get Hip Mejía to come outside the house to show them identification.
According to NBC Boston, "Leominster police arrived at the scene, recovered the child, and returned her to the family."
Medically complex and disable children shouldn’t be bargaining chips, period. This outrageous act by #immigration officials is inexcusable and ultimately led to the separation of this 5-year-old autistic girl from Massachusetts 😡
[image or embed]
— Little Lobbyists (@littlelobbyists.com) September 23, 2025 at 10:43 AM
The couple has two children who were born in the United States. Neither parent was taken into custody that day. However, two days later, ICE returned to their home and took Hip Mejía into custody, his wife said. He is now being held at a detention center in Plymouth.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the US Department of Homeland Security, responded to NBC News' English version of the initial reporting, calling it "a disgusting smear." She claimed that Hip Mejia "ignored law enforcement emergency lights to pull over and drove back to his house," and then "abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car."
The family's experience is part of an attempt by ICE to deliver on US President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations.
The initial reporting and footage sparked swift outrage, with critics across the United States and beyond condemning agents' treatment of the family as "fascism," "truly evil," and "a fucking abomination."
Joanna Kuebler, chief of programs at the advocacy group America's Voice, said in a Tuesday statement that "this visceral event is just another frightening example of a broader and deeply disturbing pattern by this administration."
"The combination of cruelty and impunity in pursuit of a mass deportation crusade is dangerous for America and all of our safety," Kuebler added. "Smashing car windows, ripping families apart, and traumatizing children threatens the public safety of American communities and the stability of our nation.”
This article has been updated with comment from the US Department of Homeland Security and corrections by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As White House Doubles Down, Judge Launches Inquiry of Refusal to Return Kilmar Abrego Garcia
"There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding," the judge said. "Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments... I expect all hands on deck."
Apr 15, 2025
As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday had a "full-blown meltdown" after a reporter asked about the Maryland man wrongly deported to a prison in his native El Salvador, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis launched an inquiry into the Trump administration's refusal to seek the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States.
The Trump administration has previously admitted in court that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly sent to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT)—despite an immigration judge's 2019 order barring his deportation to El Salvador—due to an administrative error. Xinis ordered the administration to facilitate his release, a decision unanimously affirmed last week by the U.S. Supreme Court.
However, Abrego Garcia remained imprisoned as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued in a Sunday filing that Xinis has "no authority" to compel the administration to bring him home, and as President Donald Trump on Monday welcomed Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to the White House. Their meeting was followed by a Tuesday court hearing.
According to NBC News: "Attorneys for Abrego Garcia had asked that the administration be found in contempt of court over its inaction. The judge said she wants to review the evidence the administration submits, which is expected to include sworn depositions, before ruling on the matter."
During the hearing, Drew Ensign of the DOJ told Xinis—who was appointed to the District of Maryland by former President Barack Obama—that if Abrego Garcia "appears at a port of entry or U.S. Embassy we will facilitate his return."
Meanwhile, the judge called out the administration, saying: "What the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing. I asked for reports from individuals with direct knowledge, and I've gotten very little information of any value."
"We're going to move. There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding," Xinis continued. "There are no business hours while we do this… Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments. I'm usually pretty good about things like that in my court, but not this time. So, I expect all hands on deck."
NEW: Judge Xinis authorizes up to 15 interrogatories, 15 document requests, depositions from all govt declarants (Cerna, Katz, Kozak, and Mazzara) and up to two others to assess what the govt has done to "facilitate" Kilmar Abrego Garcia's release storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
[image or embed]
— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) April 15, 2025 at 6:36 PM
At the White House on Tuesday, a reporter asked Leavitt who is responsible for Abrego Garcia and where he is going to end up. The press secretary responded by sharing unfounded allegations that he is a "terrorist" and member of the gang MS-13, and said that "deporting him back to El Salvador was always going to be the end result."
Leavitt also used Bukele's framing from the Oval Office event, when he suggested that returning the Maryland resident would mean smuggling a terrorist into the country. In addition to Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has sent 238 Venezuelan migrants to CECOT, and the president on Monday expressed interest in sending "homegrown" American prisoners there.
"This is what mass deportation looks like," Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the advocacy group America's Voice, said in a Tuesday statement. "The concept of stripping citizenship from U.S. citizens and sending them to El Salvador prisons without due process is the stuff of nightmares and undemocratic regimes, yet here we are."
"It's hard to overstate what the stakes are for our democracy and core American principles given what we're seeing and what the administration is now floating as the next steps in their larger deportation agenda," Cárdenas added. "And it's time Americans of all political perspectives stand up and speak out in opposition."
Some Democrats in Congress have blasted the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda and are part of the battle to bring Abrego Garcia home—including U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is aiming to travel to El Salvador if the deported man is not swiftly returned to his state. Multiple Democratic members of the House of Representatives have signaled that they plan to join the trip.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Blizzard' of Anti-Immigrant Trump Moves Aimed at Remaking US in 'MAGA's Preferred Image'
"Rather than viewing each executive action in isolation, we should take in totality: They are attempting to kick out and keep out as many immigrants as possible—whether here legally or not," said one advocate.
Feb 21, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's "flood the zone" strategy, characterized by a relentless stream of policies and proclamations, has extended to his anti-immigration agenda, with a "blizzard" of news stories this week detailing the administration's hostility toward and endangerment of asylum-seekers and immigrants across the country.
One immigrant rights organization on Friday advised the public not to lose sight of the overarching goal of the Trump administration and his MAGA movement as people try to make sense of the harms being imposed on their communities: to "embark on a radical reshaping of America that tramples on both our interests and our values."
America's Voice, which works to create a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., said that "the sheer volume of immigration policy news is best viewed in the aggregate, taking into account the array of proposed and enacted policies and the larger through lines and implications."
This past week, as Common Dreams reported, Americans learned about the fates of about 300 people who had come from all over the world to seek safety in the U.S., only to be deported to Panama—which has agreed to serve as a "bridge" country in Trump's mass deporation operation—and locked in a hotel before many of them agreed to board flights back to their home countries. About 100 of them, including eight children, were sent to a remote detention camp near the sweltering Darién jungle where authorities confiscated their cellphones, cutting them off from contact with journalists.
"None of the actions taken are about public safety or our economic interests or even what's best for the lives and futures of Trump voters."
That news came ahead of reports that Trump was revoking Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants, making them eligible for deportation starting this summer even as "Haiti continues to be roiled by violence and disorder," as America's Voice executive director Vanessa Cárdenas said.
As Common Dreams reported on Wednesday, the U.S. Department of the Interior moved to cut off legal services for unaccompanied migrant children, ordering organizations that have helped tens of thousands of children to stop providing representation to them and ending funding for the legal programs.
On top of those developments were the shifting of Department of Homeland Security resources away from investigating drug dealers, suspected terrorists, and weapons trafficking to deportation operations—which have swept up thousands of people with no criminal records—and the firing of federal health inspectors at some border stations while the administration has said it plans to begin turning away migrants on the grounds that they could spread communicable diseases.
"The disconnect and hypocrisy was a particularly stark reminder that the administration isn't motivated by keeping the public safe as much as keeping out and kicking out immigrants as their top priority," said America's Voice.
Cárdenas said the policies of the past week have made clear that "the Trump administration's anti-immigrant obsession comes at a high cost to all of us."
"Rather than viewing each executive action in isolation, we should take in totality: they are attempting to kick out and keep out as many immigrants as possible—whether here legally or not," said Cárdenas. "It is particularly egregious that this administration is going yet again after children by preventing their access to legal representation. None of the actions taken are about public safety or our economic interests or even what's best for the lives and futures of Trump voters, as their immigration agenda and plans for indiscriminate mass deportations will harm each of those measures. Instead, it's part of a larger effort to remake the nation in MAGA's preferred image."
As the administration introduced new policies and the human impacts of its anti-immigration agenda were made increasingly clear, the White House released an "ASMR" video this week featuring the sounds of handcuffs and chains being used in Trump's mass deportations. It also posted to social media a Valentine's Day message threatening to deport people who are unauthorized to be in the United States.
"Trump's intention is not to solve a problem but to create one as he puts on a show of cruelty for his supporters with his plan for mass deportations," wrote Maribel Hastings, a columnist with America's Voice. "Trump 'thrives' on the chaos he creates he purposely provokes to maintain a narrative and justify actions such as indiscriminate detentions and deportations."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular