Two young American citizens a 5-year-old and a 4-year-old were deported last week alongside their undocumented parents, sparking outrage from immigration advocates and raising fresh concerns over the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement policies.
Denisse Parra Vargas and her husband, Omar, were driving their children to school in Austin, Texas when they were pulled over by Texas state troopers for what was described as an expired license plate. Though their two youngest children were born in the United States and are citizens, both parents were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on suspicion of being undocumented immigrants.
Omar was quickly detained and deported to Mexico. Denisse, meanwhile, was fitted with an electronic ankle monitor and told to report to a new immigration processing facility in Pflugerville. According to the Austin-based advocacy group Grassroots Leadership, Denisse was informed that attending the appointment might open the door for an asylum claim and a work permit. Trusting that promise, she arrived with her three children in tow.
What happened next, however, was anything but routine.
“They just disappeared,” a spokesperson from Grassroots Leadership told us. “We couldn’t find them. We were entering her registration number into the ICE system, and she wasn’t showing up anywhere.”
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Denisse and her children were held incommunicado. Legal teams scrambled to locate her, but ICE provided no updates. It wasn’t until early Wednesday that Denisse was able to make a brief call from Reynosa, Mexico to confirm that she had been deported—and her three children, including two U.S. citizens, were with her.
“She didn’t understand what she was signing,” the spokesperson said. “She thought she was following instructions that would help her stay legally. Instead, she was tricked into leaving the country with no legal advice, no warning, and no way to protect the rights of her citizen children.”
This isn’t an isolated incident. In April alone, three other U.S.-born children were deported under similar circumstances. One was just two years old. Two siblings—one of whom was undergoing cancer treatment—were deported to Honduras with their mother.
These deportations are happening under the oversight of Tom Homan, Trump’s newly reappointed border chief. Homan has publicly defended the removal of citizen children alongside their undocumented parents, framing it as a consequence of parental decisions.
“Having a U.S. citizen child after entering illegally is not a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Homan said during a recent appearance on Face the Nation.
But legal experts and immigrant rights groups argue that this kind of policy strips children of their most basic rights as American citizens.
“This wasn’t about law and order,” the Grassroots Leadership spokesperson emphasized. “This was about fear and control. Denisse and Omar were loving parents. Their only mistake was an expired registration tag. And now their children are in a foreign country, stripped of everything familiar, including their legal protections.”
The advocacy group says Denisse was not given the chance to place her children with a guardian in the U.S., which could have prevented their illegal removal. Nor did she receive legal counsel before signing paperwork she did not understand. The children were not even allowed to collect personal belongings or school materials before being deported.
“It’s May,” the spokesperson said. “These kids should be wrapping up the school year, attending class parties, learning how to read and count. Instead, they’re sitting on the other side of the border, unsure of what’s next.”
Trump administration officials, including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have long argued that removing entire families—including citizen children—serves as a deterrent against undocumented immigration. Miller has publicly stated that children left behind often grow up to become “adult immigrants,” a claim critics say dehumanizes American-born children for political gain.
Grassroots Leadership’s legal team continues to explore options to bring the children back home. But the damage—both legal and emotional—is already done.
“This isn’t just a policy failure,” the spokesperson said. “This is a moral one. And it’s happening behind closed doors, without a trace.”
Source: thedailybeast.com
