The facts of this story are horrible, so we’ll tell them straight: the ACLU of Louisiana asserted in late April that federal officials in Louisiana had speedily removed from the country three children aged 2, 4, and 7. Like other removals from the country, the expulsion of the 2-year-old citizen and others snared in the immigration roundup was so fast that officials failed to note that the three — removed with other members of their families — were born as U.S. citizens. Citizens cannot be “deported” from the United States, so the children’s removal flight was (to put this charitably) legally dubious.
Two of the children were expelled despite having cancer. One of them has a rare stage IV cancer — but according to the ACLU, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent that child away with neither medication nor a consultation with their doctors. A federal district judge appointed by Trump in 2018 wrote in a late Friday order that the two-year-old appeared to have been expelled — and separated from her father — “with no meaningful process.”
Donald Trump isn’t just illegally removing U.S. citizens from the country without due process.He’s illegally removing U.S. citizens who are literal children undergoing care for cancer.www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol…
— Hillary Rodham Clinton (@hillaryclinton.bsky.social) 2025-04-26T13:50:47.013Z
The Department of Justice will go before the same judge in May to address whether federal officials in fact carried out an “illegal and unconstitutional” expulsion of U.S. citizens.