El Paso, Texas — Immigration officials flew a 2-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras last week because her mother, who faced deportation, “wanted her child with her,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says.
Noem spoke about the case, which drew alarm from a federal judge, in a wide-ranging interview with CBS News at the U.S.-Mexico border on Monday, covering President Trump’s immigration crackdown and some of the ensuing legal controversies.
Mr. Trump retook the White House on a promise of tighter border security and a crackdown on illegal immigration. Now, 100 days in, the administration is touting a 95% drop in illegal crossings along the southern border, and the fewest “encounters” reported there in decades.
But when it comes to removing the millions of undocumented immigrants who have already crossed into the U.S. or overstayed their visas, the Trump administration has faced legal pushback.
“We’ve been doing this correctly. We’ve been building cases. We’ve been going after the worst of the worst and doing it the right way,” Noem said.
A number of federal judges aren’t so sure, including most recently in the case of the undocumented mother who was deported to Honduras on Friday. Her 2-year-old — a U.S. citizen — was also removed from the U.S. with her before a court could clarify the child’s interests. The result, wrote U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, is the “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
“I fundamentally disagree with that. I’m sure that these judges will continue to challenge every single thing that this administration does. We have several activist judges across the country that have made claims such as this. But that mother made a choice for her child and wanted to keep her child with her,” Noem said.
Some of the judges who have ruled against the administration’s immigration policies were nominated by Republicans, including Doughty — a Trump nominee — and a Reagan-appointed appeals court judge who called the Trump administration’s claims in the case of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia “shocking.”
When pressed on whether those judges are activists, Noem said there are “legal opinions on both sides of that issue. And that’s why we have a court system, so that decisions like that can be appealed and the Supreme Court can make decisions ultimately that will give us much more clarity on what due process is, what it’s defined by, and what it is followed on.”
The 2-year-old girl, her 11-year-old sister and her mother were taken into custody Tuesday morning during a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in New Orleans. An attorney for the family notified immigration authorities that the girl was a U.S. citizen and emailed a copy of her birth certificate to ICE, according to court documents. But later that day, an ICE agent called the girl’s father and informed him that “they were going to deport his partner and daughters,” the documents said.
The Trump administration submitted a letter dated April 24 in federal court that officials say shows the mother agreed to have her young daughter come with her to Honduras.
Attorneys representing the family said the girl’s father, who is believed to still be in the U.S., tried to appoint someone to be the child’s legal guardian, so she could remain in the U.S. But an ICE official said in a court filing that the agency did not get the required information to do that. A court hearing on the matter has been scheduled for May 16.
When asked if the 2-year-old could return if a relative in the U.S. wanted the child back and the mother agrees, Noem said, “Yes, absolutely. And that’s the process.”
“This mother gave us documentation and fully said she wanted her child with her, and we honored that,” Noem said.
Noem denied that harshness is part of the administration’s message in removing mothers who have U.S. children from the country.
“With families, we recognize that families can stay together. And so these mothers get the option to take their children with them, which I think is absolutely where President Trump’s heart is,” she said. “I think the mothers should have the option to have their children with them. And then, if those mothers do leave and choose to register and self-deport, them and their children can come back, or if they want to have their child cared for by somebody else in the United States, that’s an option that they can pursue too.”
ICE said Tuesday it has carried out roughly 66,500 arrests and deported nearly 65,700 unauthorized immigrants since Jan. 20. Three in four of those arrests involved unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, according to the agency.
Despite the administration’s crackdown, Noem said she still wants the U.S. to have a welcoming attitude to legal immigration.
“Oh, absolutely,” she said. “And that’s part of our process we need to fix.”
Camilo Montoya Galvez contributed reporting.
