Deported Cuban mother separated from breastfeeding 1-year-old daughter

In this file photo, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Baltimore Field Officer director Matt Elliston listens during a briefing, Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, in Silver Spring, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) (Alex Brandon/AP)

HAVANA — HAVANA - U.S. immigration officials’ deportation of a woman to Cuba last week, separating her from her one-year-old daughter, has drawn fresh attention to what critics say is the Trump administration’s willingness to split up families as part of its migration crackdown.

Heidy Sanchez, interviewed by Reuters on Monday, said she was told she would be deported and separated from her still-breastfeeding daughter, a U.S. citizen.

Her account is disputed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which contends that parents are given a choice of taking their child with them and that Sanchez had elected to leave her daughter with a relative.

Democrats and immigrant advocates have argued that due process rights of immigrants are being violated during the deportation drive of U.S. President Donald Trump - and that young children are being caught up in it.

Last week, a Trump-appointed U.S. judge in Louisiana said a two-year-old U.S. citizen was deported with her mother and sister to Honduras “with no meaningful process.” In a similar case in Louisiana last week, two U.S. citizen children - including one with a rare form of cancer - were also deported to Honduras with their mother, advocates said.

In the case of Sanchez, she told Reuters she was surprised at a routine check-in at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Tampa last Thursday, and that she was given no choice but to leave behind her daughter.

“They told me to call my husband, that our daughter had to stay and that I would go,” she said in an interview at a family member’s home near the Cuban capital, Havana. “My daughter got nervous and agitated and began to ask for milk, but it didn’t matter to them.”

The Department of Homeland Security told Reuters that Sanchez’s statement was inaccurate and contradicted standard ICE protocol.

“Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with someone the parent designates,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed response late on Monday.

“In this case, the parent stated they wanted to be removed without the child and left the child in the care of a safe relative in the United States.”

DHS did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for evidence that Sanchez had been offered the choice to take her child with her.

Sanchez said she arrived in her home country hours after being detained, with no passport or identification and no documentation from the United States explaining the reason for her deportation.

Democratic U.S. Representative Kathy Castor called the treatment of the Sanchez family “unconscionable and wrong” and urged Trump on Monday to reunite the family in Florida.

Due process concerns

Trump has vowed to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, an aggressive campaign that has created challenging situations for so-called “mixed-status families” where children or other family members have U.S. citizenship or legal status while others do not.

Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, said the two Honduran mothers were taken into custody during routine check-ins and that they were never given the choice to leave their children with a caregiver in the U.S.

Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, called the children’s deportations “sickening” and “immoral” in a speech on the Senate floor on Monday, saying the rule of law was “under attack.”

In a response to Reuters, McLaughlin said ICE did not deport U.S. citizen children and that “their mother made the determination to take her children with her back to Honduras.”

Trump border czar Tom Homan on Monday blamed parents for putting their children at risk of deportation by remaining in the United States.

“If you choose to have a U.S.-citizen child, knowing you’re in this country illegally, you put yourself in that position,” he said.

Sanchez, 44, had been under deportation orders since 2019 but was allowed to temporarily live and work in the United States as long as she regularly checked in with ICE.

During that time, she married a Cuban-born naturalized U.S. citizen and had her first child in November 2023.

Her husband sought legal residence in the U.S. for Sanchez two years ago as a result of their marriage, but had yet to receive a response, she said.

Sanchez said officials separated her from her child at the check-in, escorted her to a van, handcuffed her and later that day deported her by air to Cuba alongside 81 others.

“I can’t sleep, I can’t rest,” a tearful Sanchez said. “All I ask is that they reunite me again with my daughter.”

Policy change

The cases highlight a sharp break in policy between the Trump and Biden administrations.

Under Democratic president Joe Biden, ICE officials were instructed to consider the impact of enforcement action on families.

Trump rescinded that guidance, broadening the scope of enforcement and targeting migrants like Sanchez with standing deportation orders.

Sanchez, who said she had no criminal record, is now just a few hundred kilometres from her daughter in Florida but a world apart.

Worsening shortages of food, fuel and medicine on the communist-run island, just 90 miles (145 km) off Key West, have made life unbearable for many Cubans.

The crisis has spurred a record-breaking exodus from the island of over one million people, a predicament Cuba blames on U.S. sanctions that contribute to strangling an already nefficient state-run economy.

Sanchez said she now faced the “impossible” decision to remain apart from her infant daughter or reunite with her family in crisis-racked Cuba.

“Everybody knows the situation here,” she said.

(Reporting by Mario Fuentes and Dave Sherwood in Havana; additional reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; editing by Lincoln Feast and Rosalba O’Brien)

Article written by Mario Fuentes and Dave Sherwood, Reuters