After his wife and children, including newborn twins, were suddenly deported to Mexico by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a Texas man is fighting to get his family back.
Federico Arellano Jr., a U.S. citizen, watched as his wife, Christina Salazar, and their four children were taken into custody on December 11, just three months after Salazar gave birth to their twins in Houston.
Salazar, 23, and her children were put on a plane at Houston’s George Bush Airport bound for Reynosa, Mexico – a place where they had no contacts and no way to get money, the family’s lawyers said. Lawyers also said it was cold the night Salazar and her children were detained and they were not allowed to take their coats.
By birthright law under U.S. law, the twins are U.S. citizens, as they were born in the country and at least one of their parents is a citizen.
Salazar was born in Mexico. She and her two older children were awaiting immigration hearings. Arellano Jr. told local Houston news outlet KHOU that the family missed an immigration hearing on Oct. 9, when Salazar was recovering from the emergency C-section she had to undergo to deliver the twins.
According to the family, they were told the hearing would be postponed when they called to inform the court of the health problem.
The family was reportedly called back by an immigration court official and told to come to a meeting point in Houston to discuss their case. There, Salazar and her four children were arrested.
The family had no legal representation at the time of the arrest, but is now represented by immigration attorneys Isaias Torres and Silvia Mintz, who said that “the reason she was arrested, they were told, is because she did not go to an immigration hearing. ”.
Torres told KHOU: “This case should not have gone to such an extreme. There were options, legal options, that were available, and he wasn’t given those opportunities. They thought they were obeying and doing what they were told. And that turned out not to be the case.”
Arellano Jr.’s goal is to get his family back to the US so they can go through the legal immigration process.
Ice and the Justice Department did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment.
