NEW ORLEANS — The fluorescent lights of the immigration courtroom flickered as a judge scribbled notes, her pen scratching against paper. It was April 23, 2025, and the Trump administration’s latest immigration sweep had just cast a shadow over two Louisiana families. Among them: three U.S. citizen children, ages two, four, and seven, yanked from their homes and deported alongside their undocumented parents. One of those kids, a boy not yet old enough for kindergarten, is battling a rare metastatic cancer. He was sent across the border without his medication or a doctor’s consult.
The deportations, carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sparked a firestorm when details emerged. The families, who’d lived quietly in the U.S. for years, were rounded up in a predawn raid. By Friday, they were gone—shipped to Mexico with little warning. Court filings from that day show the judge demanding an emergency hearing, stunned that a U.S. citizen toddler was deported with “no meaningful process.” ICE, the documents reveal, had been warned about the boy’s medical needs but failed to coordinate care or consult his oncologist.
Another case, just weeks earlier, mirrors this one. On March 15, a 10-year-old U.S. citizen girl with brain cancer was deported from Texas to Mexico with her undocumented parents. Her family, too, was given no chance to arrange medical care. Her chemotherapy schedule, meticulously planned by her doctors, was left in tatters. The girl’s hospital bed in Houston now sits empty.
These aren’t isolated fumbles. ICE’s own rules, laid out in government directives, require the agency to arrange care for minors during deportations, especially those with serious health conditions. Yet, in both cases, the families were cut off from legal counsel and medical support. One mother, pregnant and deported alongside her sick child, was given no prenatal care plan. The paperwork paints a grim picture: decisions made in haste, with no regard for the kids’ U.S. passports or their fragile health.
Advocates say the deportations expose a brutal side of the administration’s immigration push. The children, born on U.S. soil, are entitled to stay. But with parents facing deportation, families often have no choice but to stick together, even if it means leaving behind life-saving treatment. The government’s own records confirm ICE knew about the children’s conditions but pressed forward anyway.
On April 26, a Louisiana courtroom was still sorting through the fallout. The judge’s order for a hearing is a rare rebuke, but it’s unclear if the families will return. For now, a two-year-old with cancer is somewhere in Mexico, far from his doctors. His medicine, last seen in a Louisiana apartment, never made it across the border.
The administration has not issued a statement on the deportations. ICE’s public logs, updated daily, list the families’ removal but omit the children’s citizenship or medical details. The hospital records, sealed under privacy laws, confirm the boy’s diagnosis and the girl’s ongoing treatment plan, now disrupted. The families’ names remain confidential, protected by court orders.