Two 12-year-old sisters born in the United States were deported to Guatemala along with their mother earlier this week only to be returned the same day, with the twins forced to endure hours of flights in a legal maneuver the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office now concedes was unlawful.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s going on in this country is shocking in a lot of ways, but this, to me, is just unacceptable behavior by human beings to treat children this way,\u201d Senior District Judge Gregory Presnell said at a Tuesday hearing on the matter. \u201cWhether the mother was subject to her removal or not is beside the point to me at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time of the hearing, the girls, born and raised in Orlando, and their mother, a Guatemalan national, had already been in Guatemala for hours and, unknown to the court, were being readied to return home.<\/p>\n
The case began when the mother, Marly Morataya-Zepeda, was ordered to check-in Monday with Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the agency\u2019s Orlando office.<\/p>\n
\u201cBring your girls and documents,\u201d she was told, court records show, though it wasn\u2019t clear why until she got there.<\/p>\n
When she arrived, she went inside the ICE office while the twins waited in the parking lot with their grandmother. Her daughters were then asked to come to the front door of the building.<\/p>\n
There, the girls were arrested by an ICE officer.<\/p>\n
By 8:15 a.m. Tuesday, the three were on a plane to Guatemala City. Hours earlier, however, attorneys for the family had filed a petition in federal court seeking to stop the girls\u2019 removal. Their mother wanted the children to remain in Orlando with their grandmother or their father, both permanent residents.<\/p>\n
Soon after arriving in Guatemala, the three then were flown back to the U.S., landing first in Texas on Tuesday evening and then at Orlando International Airport the following morning.<\/p>\n
The family\u2019s swift removal and return raises questions about ICE\u2019s actions and its agents adherence to policies, the family\u2019s attorneys said in court filings. ICE claimed they were following a \u201cfamily-unity\u201d policy, the documents show, but they ignored the wishes of the mother who wanted her girls to remain in the U.S.<\/p>\n
That policy, known as ICE Directive 11064.4, prohibits the detention of minors unless they are the subject of immigration enforcement, which Morataya-Zepeda\u2019s children were not, the family\u2019s attorneys said. Parents and legal guardians taken into custody also must have the opportunity to arrange for another caretaker \u2014 and that did not happen, they added.<\/p>\n
Attorneys Laura Hernandez, who represents the girls, and Ilia Garrity-Lopez, who represents the mother, called for a congressional investigation in a statement issued to the Orlando Sentinel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a immigration dispute,\u201d the statement said. \u201cThis is a constitutional crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a court filing, they also called for ICE Director Todd Lyons and the office who arrested the trio, identified in open court as Christine Jaehne, to appear in court and explain the agency\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
ICE did not respond to a message seeking comment on the deportation. The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office has until Friday to respond to the attorneys\u2019 filings.<\/p>\n
Since 2013, Morataya-Zepeda has been under an order for her removal, but it has not been enforced, and she has been allowed to stay in the country, records show. Since then, she made a life in the U.S. while periodically checking in with immigration authorities.<\/p>\n
It is not clear what prompted them to take her into custody 13 years later, but the government has made an immigration crackdown a priority since President Donald Trump returned to office last year.<\/p>\n
Garrity-Lopez, the attorney, was there when the family was arrested at the ICE office Monday. She said she did not know why the ICE agent insisted on seeing the 12-year-olds. As U.S. citizens, they didn\u2019t have to appear at the appointment, as ICE does not have authority to detain Americans even when their parents are detained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked Jaehne the reason why she needed to see the children, and she told me that they had a flight scheduled for the three of them and that the children needed to leave with her, based on a family unity policy that ICE had, in order to remove the children with the mother,\u201d Garrity-Lopez told Presnell on Tuesday, according to a transcript the Sentinel obtained.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Morataya-Zepeda made another visit to the ICE office, emerging later with the attorneys before heading to another office to be fitted with an ankle monitor.<\/p>\n
She is temporarily allowed to return home, as are the twins. ICE intends to deport her in a month, records show, but her attorney plans to argue now that the agency has removed her and brought her back, the 2013 removal order is no longer valid.<\/p>\n