ICE Forced to Return Two U.S. Citizen Kids It Deported in Error
Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left
Summary
Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported two 12-year-old American twin sisters to Guatemala, even after their mother—who was also deported—requested for them to stay in Florida with their grandmother. Now ICE has been ordered to bring them home.Marly Carolina Morataya Zepeda was ordered to appear at an Orlando, Florida, ICE facility on March 9 with her “children and documents” to complete her deportation process. Her mother, Sonia Garcia Valles, waited outside the courthouse with the twins until an ICE officer told her to bring the twins into the detention center, where they were taken into custody.The court filed a temporary restraining order against the twins’ deportation, only to learn hours later that they were already on a plane to Guatemala, even though their mother filled out the proper paperwork to have her children, who were born in Orlando, stay in the U.S.The traumatic error is being remedied.“Respondents are DIRECTED to coordinate with Petitioners and their counsel to facilitate, including by covering all associated costs, the IMMEDIATE AND SAFE RETURN of minor Petitioners A.E.T.M. and A.E.T.M. to the United States, specifically to the custody of their grandmother, Sonia Garcia Valles, in Orlando, Florida via the Orlando International Airport,” the court order read.This massive mistake has become all too common during the Trump administration, even as it claims time and time again that it does not deport American citizens, much less middle schoolers.“The Trump mass deportation push has led to ICE screwing up at levels we’ve never seen before,” American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on Wednesday. “These kinds of errors have always happened on occasion in the past, but now they’re happening daily/weekly as basic accountability measures have been pushed aside in the rush to deport.”
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