Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the deportation of three children who are U.S. citizens, claiming the mothers could have made their kids stay behind.

“Those children are U.S. citizens,” Rubio said on Sunday’s episode of “Meet The Press.” “They can come back into the United States if their father or someone here who wants to assume them. But ultimately, who was deported was their mothers, who were here illegally. The children just went with their mothers.”

According to The Washington Post, the three children were from two different families, ages 2, 4 and 7, and deported early Friday. Their lawyers said “both families were taken into custody while attending routine check-ins this week in New Orleans as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which allows individuals to remain in their communities while undergoing immigration proceedings.” They were then taken to Alexandria, Louisiana, a three-hour drive from New Orleans, and put on a flight to Honduras, all while preventing any communication with any members of their families.

When asked on “Meet The Press” about such deportations violating the due process rights of both citizens and noncitizens, Rubio skirted around the question and said, “If someone’s in this country unlawfully, illegally, that person gets deported.”

Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar and the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said on Sunday’s “Face The Nation” that the children weren’t deported, but rather that the “mother chose to take the children with her.”

“When you enter the country illegally, and you know you’re here illegally and you choose to have a U.S. citizen child, that’s on you,” Homan said. “That’s not on this administration. If you choose to put your family in that position, that’s on them. But having a U.S. citizen child after you enter this country illegally is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. That doesn’t make you immune from our laws.”

Gracie Willis of the National Immigration Project told The Associated Press that the mothers did not even have an opportunity to decide whether they wanted their children to stay in the United States.

“We have no idea what ICE was telling them, and in this case what has come to light is that ICE didn’t give them another alternative,” Willis said. “They didn’t give them a choice, that these mothers only had the option to take their children with them despite loving caregivers being available in the United States to keep them here.”