A federal judge has ruled that being deported does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Constitution, rejecting an illegal immigrant mother’s request that her potential removal be rescinded.
Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr., a Clinton appointee to the court in Ohio, declined to step in and block the possible deportation of Carmen Graciela Guerrero Sandoval, a pregnant woman who already has one 9-year-old U.S. citizen son.
She had argued that being forced to go back to her home in El Salvador and leave her boy, who has autism, and miss out on her unborn child becoming a U.S. citizen by birth, is too much.
“The removal of the plaintiffs’ mother constitutes a form of cruel and unusual punishment for the plaintiffs,” George A. Katchmer, the woman’s lawyer, argued to the court. He also argued that the deportation violated the 9-year-old’s rights because deportation of his mother means he would be treated differently than other children, violating the Equal Protection Clause.
Judge Sargus said the case raised a “sad set of facts,” and said the situation “no doubt brings stress and potential harm” to Ms. Guerrero Sandoval’s family.
But he said the law is clear that a citizen child doesn’t grant an automatic stay of deportation.
“Federal district courts cannot issue a temporary restraining order, injunction, or stay of a removal order of a parent based on a child’s challenge to the order based on the potential violation of the child’s constitutional rights,” the judge wrote in his ruling Thursday.
He declined to issue a restraining order and suggested the mother is unlikely to do much better if she pursues the case further.
“Plaintiffs are highly unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claims,” he said.
Ms. Guerrero Sandoval says she has been ordered deported by an immigration judge, which is a separate system from the regular courts. She said she has appealed that ruling to the Board of Immigration Appeals, but the judge said it’s unclear where things stand.
She says she’s been ordered to show up at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices on June 3, where she expects ICE will try to deport her.
From her legal argument, it sounds like she would intend to leave her son in the U.S.
That’s become a tricky issue as Mr. Trump steps up deportations and parents with citizen children face decisions about whether to find someone to look after them here, or bring them home.
When the administration deported two mothers, one with a 2-year-old and another with a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old, immigration advocates erupted in fury, saying the U.S. had deported citizens.
Homeland Security countered that it was the mothers who made the decision and chose to bring the children with them.
Immigration advocates had brought a case on behalf of the 2-year-old, but quickly dropped it after the government presented a handwritten note from the mother as evidence in court that she asked her child be sent with her.
Trump officials point out that they were excoriated during the first Trump administration when they deported parents without their children, and were accused of a “family separation” policy. Now that they are working to keep families together, they again face scrutiny.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.