After his wife and children, including newborn twins, were suddenly deported to Mexico by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a Texas man is fighting to get his family back.
Federico Arellano Jr, a US citizen, saw his wife, Christina Salazar, and their four children be taken into custody on 11 December, just three months after Salazar had given birth to their twins in Houston.
Salazar, 23, and her children were put on a plane at Houston’s George Bush airport bound for Reynosa, Mexico – a place where they had no contacts and no way of getting money, according to the family’s lawyers. Lawyers also said it was cold the night Salazar and her children were detained and they were not allowed to get their coats.
By birthright citizenship under US law, the twins are US citizens since they were born within the country and at least one of their parents is a citizen.
Salazar was born in Mexico. She and her two older children were awaiting immigration hearings. Arellano Jr told local Houston news outlet KHOU the family had missed an immigration hearing on 9 October, when Salazar had been recovering from the emergency cesarean section she had had to deliver the twins.
According to the family, they had been told the hearing would be rescheduled when they called to inform the court of the health issue.
The family allegedly received a call back from an official at the immigration court and were instructed to arrive at a meeting point in Houston to discuss their case. It was there Salazar and her four children were arrested.
The family did not have legal representation at the time of the arrest, but is now represented by immigration attorneys Isaias Torres and Silvia Mintz, who said “the reason she was arrested, they were told, is that she failed to go to an immigration hearing”.
Torres told KHOU: “This case shouldn’t have gone to this extreme. There were options, legal options, that were available, and he was not given those opportunities. They thought that they were complying and doing as they were told. And it turns out that they were not.”
Arellano Jr’s goal is to get his family back to the US so they can go through the legal immigration process.
Ice and the Department of Justice did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment.
