Trump opponents see kids as Achilles’ heel of immigration crackdown

President Trump has fallen into a parent trap.

The people who accused him years ago of “family separations” for deporting parents without their children in tow are now lambasting him for sending the children with their parents.

The criticism poured in over the past week as a 2-year-old U.S. citizen was sent to Honduras with her mother. The illegal immigrant told immigration authorities that she wanted to take her daughter with her. Immigration rights advocates said another, a 4-year-old child with stage four cancer, was also sent to Honduras with their mother, but without her medication.

“Let this sink in: Our government is deporting American kids, including kids with cancer,” said Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of America’s Voice. She said the decisions reek of “cruelty.”

White House border czar Tom Homan said the decision belonged to the parents, not the Trump administration.

“What we did is remove children with their mothers who requested the children depart with them,” Mr. Homan said Monday. “The mothers made that choice. And I tell you what, if we didn’t do it, the story today would be Trump administration separating families again.”

That was a reference to 2018, when Mr. Trump’s zero-tolerance policy for illegal immigrant families led to migrant parents being jailed and their children taken from them and placed in the migrant child foster care system.

The problem was that no plan was in place to reunite the children with their parents. When the parents were deported, the children stayed. Federal judges stepped in with forceful rulings ordering an end to the situation, saying parents had to be given an informed choice.

Now, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty has said even that may not be good enough.

In a rebuke last week, he explained his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

Government attorneys said the girl’s mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, stated that she wanted to take her daughter, Valentina Mendez Lopez, to Honduras when she was deported. She wrote a note Thursday memorializing that decision. The government submitted it to Judge Doughty.

He said he couldn’t rely on the note.

As the plane was in flight over the Gulf of America, he tried to arrange a call with the mother. By the time the government replied to the judge, the woman and presumably the child had been released in Honduras.

The judge said deporting a U.S. citizen is illegal.

One major difference in 2018 was that the children were newly arrived citizens of other countries, making them illegal immigrants.

The children in question now are U.S. citizens, born to illegal immigrants living in the country for years in some cases.

Mr. Trump has tried to curtail that situation. On his first day in office, he ordered the federal government to stop recognizing automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants and temporary visitors.

Judges have put that policy on hold. The matter has been sped to the Supreme Court, which has scheduled an emergency oral argument for next month.

Mr. Homan said Monday that it’s wrong to say the U.S. deported the children.

“The parents made that decision, not the United States government,” he said.

He said having a citizen child “does not make you immune from our laws.”

“We got a secure border by enforcing laws. We’re not making this up. We’re enforcing laws under statute enacted by Congress, and it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” pointed out that U.S. citizen children can return at any time.