A Texas mother claims she was wrongfully deported to Mexico and forced to leave the United States with her four children after missing an immigration court hearing because she was recovering from giving birth to twins prematurely by emergency cesarean section.
Infants Ashley and Allison, both U.S. citizens born in Houston, have suffered from pneumonia and bronchitis, often needing oxygen masks to breathe, since arriving in Mexico, Salazar-Hinojosa told Noticias Telemundo in Spanish.
“I feel bad, I feel devastated to see my daughters sick,” she said.
According to the family, the chain of events began on September 13, when the twins were born 35 weeks premature.
“I had to have an emergency C-section. My babies were born prematurely. I was very sick from my hemorrhage,” Salazar-Hinojosa said.
Salazar-Hinojosa’s husband, Federico Arellano, called a phone number provided to the family by immigration authorities to inform them of the situation because the mother was scheduled to appear in immigration court on October 9, according to a Arellano’s affidavit shared with NBC News. Thursday evening.
The family was informed over the phone that the immigration hearing would be postponed, Arellano said in his affidavit.
At a news conference Monday, Arellano told reporters in Houston that his wife missed the Oct. 9 hearing because doctors told her to recover at home.
Arellano, 24, and Salazar-Hinojosa, 23, have been married since 2019. Arellano is a United States citizen born in Houston and Salazar-Hinojosa is a Mexican national. Besides twins Ashley and Allison, the couple also share a 2-year-old son, Federico, who was born in Mexico. Arellano is also the stepfather of his wife’s 7-year-old daughter, Yitzel, who was also born in Mexico.
Federico Arellano and Cristina Geraldyn Salazar-Hinojosa.
On Dec. 6, the family received a phone call from immigration authorities and were told to report to an office in Greenspoint, Texas, four days later to discuss Salazar-Hinojosa’s case, according to the Arellano affidavit.
Salazar-Hinojosa said she arrived at the appointment with her husband and four children thinking it would be like any of her previous routine appointments.
Instead, immigration authorities arrested Salazar-Hinojosa and she and her four children were sent to Mexico, according to the family’s attorney, Isaias Torres. Arellano’s affidavit also states that when he asked immigration authorities to let him keep the twins, they responded, “‘NO,’ the babies were too young and should stay with their mother.”
“We had nothing with us, no clothes, no diapers, nothing. We had nothing with us,” Salazar-Hinojosa told Noticias Telemundo. “They didn’t allow me to call my family, they took my phone, they snatched it from my hands.”
Arellano tried to intervene on his family’s behalf. According to Salazar-Hinojosa, her husband begged immigration authorities not to take his family away 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 take us in now,” Salazar-Hinojosa said. She said immigration authorities then insisted that she sign the deportation documents.
“They said if I didn’t sign the eviction forms and all that, they would arrest my husband and fine him,” Salazar-Hinojosa said, adding that she was afraid they would arrest her husband if she did not sign. ; “They forced me.”
After the family realized they could not prevent Salazar-Hinojosa’s deportation on such short notice, the mother felt she had no choice but to keep her children with her, stating to Noticias Telemundo that she feared that her husband would have difficulty reconciling work and childcare. .
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, twins and two other children had been deported, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News that they had only formally expelled Salazar-Hinojosa.
“ICE does not deport U.S. citizens. Any decision regarding minors with U.S. citizenship to leave the United States with their parents is up to their parents,” an ICE spokesperson said.
ICE says Salazar-Hinojosa entered the United States illegally on June 28 through the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas. The spokesperson said she was released on June 29 under the Alternatives to Detention program, pending immigration proceedings.
The spokesperson said Salazar-Hinojosa failed to appear at the Oct. 9 hearing and was removed by a judge in the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
Torres told WOAI that “this case should not have gone to this extreme. There were options, legal options that were available and he was not given that opportunity.”
A second lawyer representing Arellano and her family, Silvia Mintz, told Noticias Telemundo that she believed “the 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. “
Mintz and Torres told KHOU that Arellano tried to explain, but ICE agents stopped him.
“They were shocked and surprised to be separated,” Torres said.
Cristina Geraldyn Salazar-Hinojosa with her children.
The attorneys said they plan to file a complaint with the Office of Inspector General as well as immigration petitions to see if Salazar-Hinojosa and her children can conditionally return to the United States. This process could take several months.
President Joe Biden has faced criticism from Republicans who said his policies 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 pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in American history. His pick to lead ICE, Tim Homan, said the only way to not break up families under Trump’s plan was to “send them all back.”
People born in the United States – with the exception of the children of certain foreign diplomats – are guaranteed American citizenship by the Constitution, whether or not their parents are illegal immigrants. 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 approximately five years, ICE arrested 674 people, detained 121 people, and deported 70 people who GAO determined were potentially U.S. citizens. The GAO found that ICE did not maintain sufficient data on deportations of U.S. citizens at the time.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
