Trump Has Now Deported Multiple U.S. Citizen Children With Cancer
Two families — among them three U.S. citizens aged two, four, and seven — were abruptly deported under "troubling circumstances," says the ACLU of Louisiana
April 26, 2025
As part of
Donald Trump‘s
immigration crackdown, three U.S. citizen children were deported with their mothers by the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (
ICE) on Friday morning. One of the children was undergoing cancer treatment and one of the mothers is pregnant.
Both families had lived in the country for years and had ties to their communities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana, which warns that the circumstances of their sudden
deportations raises grave due process concerns. The civil rights organization says that the first family was detained on Tuesday and the second family on Thursday, and that one of the mothers was given less than one minute on the phone before the call was abruptly dropped, after her spouse attempted to provide a phone number to legal counsel.
Among the children deported with their mothers, says the ACLU, are three U.S. citizens aged two, four, and seven. One of the children is a U.S. citizen child suffering from a rare form of metastatic cancer and was deported out of the country without medication or consultation with their treating physicians — despite ICE being notified in advance of the child’s medical needs. The civil rights organization says that one of the mothers is pregnant, and was deported without ensuring any continuity of prenatal care or proper medical care.
“Once again, the government has used deceptive tactics to deny people their rights. These outrageous actions must be condemned. We as a nation are better than this,” said Alanah Odoms, the Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “These families deserve better. They must be returned.”
The two-year-old child’s deportation was covered widely Friday evening by media outlets, after the judge in the case demanded a hearing and
wrote in a court filing that it appeared the Trump administration had “just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
According to ACLU, both the families were reportedly isolated during key moment when decisions were made over the health, safety, and legal rights of the children involved, as they were not able to consult with legal representatives. ICE’s own written directives mandate coordination for the care of minor children with willing caretakers during detainment.
“A government agency that sequesters and deports vulnerable mothers with their US citizen children without due process must be defunded, not rewarded with an additional 45 billion dollars to continue at taxpayers’ expense,” said Mich P. Gonzalez, founding partner of Sanctuary of the South. “These families were lawfully complying with ICE’s orders and for this they suffered cruel and traumatic separation. If this is what the Trump administration is orchestrating just three months in, we should all be terrified of what the next four years will bring.”
This is at least the second time the Trump administration has deported a child suffering from cancer. Last month,
a U.S. citizen and 10-year-old child with brain cancer was deported from Texas to Mexico with her undocumented parents.
