by Robert Stewart and Bobbi-Jean Misick, Verite, Louisiana Illuminator
August 21, 2025

Two Louisiana mothers who were deported to Honduras along with their citizen children in April have now sued the Trump administration, arguing that their removals lacked due process in violation of federal law.

In a lawsuit filed at the end of July in federal court in Baton Rouge, attorneys for the families allege that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement illegally deported the two mothers – who are identified only as Julia and Rosario, without last names, in court documents – and their children, three of whom are U.S. citizens. The deported children range in age from 2 to 11 years old, and one — a 4-year-old — has stage-four kidney cancer, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint alleges that ICE officers, contrary to their own policies, denied the families due process when agents took the two mothers and their U.S. citizen children into custody during routine check-ins, keeping them at undisclosed locations and repeatedly denying them access to legal counsel and other U.S.-based family members. Those actions effectively kept the mothers from securing childcare for their children, plaintiffs argue.

“ICE has a policy for what they’re supposed to do in these instances, and they most certainly did not follow that policy,” said Stephanie Alvarez-Jones, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, in an interview.

The complaint names as defendants the Department of Homeland Security, its sub-agency ICE, the Department of Justice, and several individuals in their official capacities – including leadership in the regional ICE office in New Orleans, which carried out the deportations.

“ICE is like any other law enforcement agency, state or federal,” said Matt Vogel, supervising attorney at the National Immigration Project and lead counsel in the case.  “It has to abide by the law, and here, it just threw the law out the window, and it totally ran roughshod over the due process rights of all of these individuals.”

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin called claims that the federal government is deporting U.S. citizen children “false.”In an emailed statement, McLaughlin said that “DHS takes its responsibility to protect children seriously.”

The deportations, which made headlines in the spring and drew criticism from a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana, came as the Trump administration was facing intense criticism from civil rights groups over its aggressive approach to immigration enforcement. In March, DHS removed more than 200 people to a notorious high-security prison in El Salvador, including a Salvadoran man who had a court order protecting him against deportation for safety reasons.

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The plaintiffs in the Louisiana case include Rosario, a 25-year old Honduran citizen who lived near New Orleans with two American-born children, Ruby, 7, and Romeo, 4, the latter of whom has stage-four kidney cancer. The other family in the lawsuit includes Julia, a 30-year-old Honduran citizen who lived near Baton Rouge with two daughters, Janelle, 11, a citizen of Honduras and Jade, 2, a U.S. citizen, and her partner Jacob, the children’s father.

ICE agents took the mothers and children of both families into custody in late April, deporting them within days of their arrests, according to the suit.

“I thought I was just going to an appointment, but I was lied to,” Julia said in a statement. “I never imagined they would send me and my children to Honduras.”

Both sets of mothers and children were taken into custody during routine check-ins in April as part of a supervision program run by ICE and contracted out to surveillance technology company BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of publicly traded private prison operator GEO Group.

The check-ins took place at the offices of an ICE contractor in St. Rose, a suburb of New Orleans. According to the complaint, when the families arrived at their individual check-ins, they were taken to a room where plainclothes ICE agents were waiting. Rosario’s attorney, who accompanied her and her kids to the appointment, was not allowed to join the family.

The complaint alleges that agents confiscated their belongings, including jewelry, cell phones, and passports and presented them with documents. The families were then taken to undisclosed locations and denied access to speak with their attorneys and family members, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint states that Rosario refused to sign documents that agents presented to her without an opportunity to consult her attorney. Julia agreed to write a note stating that she would take Jade with her to Honduras only after agents allegedly said the 2-year-old would be placed into foster care if she remained in the United States. Neither mother was granted the opportunity to find childcare for their U.S. citizen children, the complaint alleges.

Vogel called this a “pure exercise of force,” arguing that ICE was trying to “deliberately and consciously and intentionally” thwart people’s due process rights.

According to a 2022 ICE directive, agents should allow arrestees to arrange care for their children and document the parent’s choice to place their kids in another guardian’s care.

After being taken into custody, Julia, Rosario and their respective children were driven three hours away from the check-in site to Alexandria, according to the suit, where they were detained in an undisclosed hotel.

Julia tried several times to communicate with both her attorney and partner, Jacob, plaintiffs claim, adding that Jacob was attempting to get physical custody of his youngest daughter. But, the suit alleges, ICE officers made communication difficult by refusing calls, cutting calls short, and saying they would also detain and deport Jacob, who is a Louisiana resident and also a plaintiff in the case.

Julia, Rosario and the children were apprehended and deported during a moment when arrests and deportations were on the rise under Trump’s effort to control borders and ramp up deportations.

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The details of the case — the alleged ruse followed by an arrest and quick deportation — are similar to others around the country since Trump took office. That includes a January arrest in the New Orleans area, in which an immigrant family of three said they were taken into custody at a routine ICE check-in, flown to Texas and deported the following day.

McLaughlin denied that ICE deports U.S. citizen children unless complying with the wishes of their parents.

“ICE asked the mothers if they wanted to be removed with their children or if they wanted ICE to place the children with someone safe the parent designates. The parents in this instance made the determination to take their children with them back to Honduras,” McLaughlin said.

Julia and Rosario’s attorneys deny that the mothers decided to take the children back with them. They said that Rosario refused to sign any document consenting to have her children sent to Honduras, and Julia only signed under threat of her daughter being sent to foster care.

“Counsel repeatedly requested the opportunity to talk to them in order to make other arrangements for the children, and ICE specifically and explicitly refused every time,” said Vogel in response to the DHS statement.

The families’ lawyers also say that the federal government failed to arrange cancer treatment in Honduras for 4-year-old Romeo. The complaint states that his mother, Rosario, has had to arrange for Romeo and his sister Ruby to travel with guardians back to the United States to receive cancer treatment.

“These recent appointments marked the first time Romeo ever had to undergo any part of his cancer treatment without his mother,” the complaint said.

McLaughlin said that ICE makes sure treatment is available “in the country to which the illegal alien is being removed.”

“The implication that ICE would deny a child the medical care they need is flatly false, and it is an insult to the men and women of federal law enforcement,” she said.

The complaint said the mental health of all four children is suffering as a result of the arrest and deportation.

The plaintiffs are asking Judge Brian Jackson to declare the removals of the two families unconstitutional and to order mothers and their children returned to the United States. The plaintiffs also want the judge to compel ICE to then follow the agency’s rules to allow the mothers to make childcare arrangements.

This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://veritenews.org/2025/08/20/lawsuit-deported-us-citizen-children-louisiana/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } }

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The post Families with citizen children deported by ICE sue Trump administration appeared first on lailluminator.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning

This article focuses on a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, highlighting allegations of rights violations and due process concerns linked to ICE’s deportations of mothers and their U.S. citizen children. The narrative emphasizes the plight of immigrant families and criticizes aggressive immigration policies, particularly under the Trump administration. The coverage leans toward advocating immigrant rights and scrutinizing law enforcement actions, reflecting values and concerns typically associated with a left-leaning perspective without endorsing extreme positions.

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