A Texas mother says she was wrongfully deported to Mexico and forced to leave the U.S. with her four children after missing an immigration court hearing while recovering from delivering premature twins via emergency C-section.
Babies Ashley and Allison, both U.S. citizens born in Houston, have suffered from pneumonia and bronchitis and often needed oxygen masks to breathe. Since their arrival in Mexico, Salazar-Hinojosa, 23, told Noticias Telemundo in Spanish.
“I feel bad, I’m devastated to see my daughters sick,” she said.
According to the family, the series of events began in September, when the twins were born.
“I had to have an emergency C-section. My babies were born prematurely. I was very sick because of my bleeding,” Salazar-Hinojosa said.
Federico Arellano, Salazar-Hinojosa’s husband and the children’s father, told KHOU in Houston that his wife missed her immigration hearing on Oct. 9 because doctors told her to recover at home.
Arellano and Salazar-Hinojosa have been married since 2019. Arellano is an American citizen born in Houston and Salazar-Hinojosa is a Mexican national.
Federico Arellano and Cristina Geraldyn Salazar-Hinojosa.
According to Arellano and his attorney, Isaias Torres, the family called the immigration court to inform them of the situation. They were told the hearing would be rescheduled.
In a later phone call, they were told to report to an immigration office in Greenspoint, Texas, on December 10 to discuss Salazar-Hinojosa’s case, Noticias Telemundo reported.
Salazar-Hinojosa said she arrived at the appointment thinking it would be just like all her previous routine appointments.
Instead, immigration authorities arrested Salazar-Hinojosa, and she and her four children — a 7-year-old, a 2-year-old and the newborn twins — were sent to Mexico, according to Torres and Arellano, who were at the appointment. with his family.
“We had nothing with us, no clothes, no diapers, nothing. We had nothing with us,” Salazar-Hinojosa told Noticias Telemundo. “They wouldn’t let me call my family, they took my phone, they ripped it out of my hands.”
Arellano tried to intervene on behalf of his family. According to Salazar-Hinojosa, her husband begged immigration authorities not to take his family from him.
“He wanted to see if we could get a lawyer to see what we could do, and they said no, that they had to arrest us now,” Salazar-Hinojosa said. She added that immigration authorities then insisted that she sign the papers for her deportation.
“They said if I didn’t sign the deportation forms and things like that, they would arrest my husband and fine him,” Salazar-Hinojosa said, adding that she feared they would arrest her husband if she didn’t sign. ; “they forced me.”
Federico Arellano with his children.
Immigration officials confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday that they had deported Salazar-Hinojosa from Texas.
While some media outlets reported that the mother, baby twins and the two other children had been deported, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News that it had only formally deported Salazar-Hinojosa.
“ICE does not deport U.S. citizens. Any decision for U.S. citizen minors to leave the U.S. with their parents is up to the parents,” an ICE spokesperson said.
ICE alleged that Salazar-Hinojosa illegally entered the U.S. through the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas on June 28. The spokesperson said she was released on June 29 under the Alternatives to Detention program, pending her immigration proceedings.
The spokesperson said Salazar-Hinojosa did not show up for the Oct. 9 hearing and was ordered removed by a judge from the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
Torres told WOAI that “this case should not have gone to such extremes. There were options, legal options that were available and he was not given that opportunity.”
Torres did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News on Wednesday. A second attorney representing Arellano and his family, Silvia Mintz, did not immediately return a call from NBC News seeking comment Thursday.
But Mintz told Noticias Telemundo that she believes “ICE agents abused their discretion because Cristina is not a criminal, the children are newborns, and this could have been resolved with a motion to reopen the case.”
Both Mintz and Torres told KHOU. Arellano tried to explain, but ICE agents stopped him.
“They were shocked and surprised that they were separated,” Torres said.
Cristina Geraldyn Salazar-Hinojosa with her children.
The attorneys have said they plan to file a complaint with the Office of Inspector General and file immigration requests to see if Salazar-Hinojosa and her children can return to the U.S. conditionally. That process can take several months.
President Joe Biden has been criticized by Republicans who say his policies have left the border open to illegal immigration. But in June, the Migration Policy Institute reported that Biden’s deportations were on track to surpass those of Donald Trump’s first administration.
Trump was elected in November after promising to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in American history. His pick to lead ICE, Tim Homan, has said the only way not to separate families under Trump’s plan is to “send them all back.”
For people born in the United States — with the exception of children of certain foreign diplomats — U.S. citizenship is constitutionally guaranteed, regardless of whether their parents are here illegally. Trump recently said in an exclusive interview with ‘Meet the Press’ that he wants to end that guarantee.
In a 2021 report, the Government Accountability Office found that in about five years, ICE arrested 674, detained 121 and removed 70 people the GAO said may have been U.S. citizens. The GAO found that ICE did not keep sufficient records of deportations of U.S. citizens at the time.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
