As accusations swirled over the weekend that young U.S. citizen children were being deported, two top Trump administration officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and border czar Tom Homan, pushed back forcefully against the narrative — making it clear that the true story is far different from what’s been circulating in the media echo chamber.
.@RealTomHoman on @Sec_Noem: “She’s a game-changer … I read that me and Kristi Noem have differences? Me and Kristi Noem are attached at the hip … That illegal alien picked the wrong person to steal a purse from.” pic.twitter.com/E0U84FQHOT
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 28, 2025
Appearing on CBS News’ Face the Nation, Homan cut straight to the heart of the matter. “Children aren’t deported,” he said flatly. In the recent controversial case involving a two-year-old child, Homan explained, “The mother chose to take the children with her.” He further stressed a point often left out of breathless headlines: when someone chooses to remain illegally in the United States and has a child here, the consequences of deportation — including decisions about the child’s custody — are the parent’s responsibility, not the government’s.
.@RealTomHoman: “I’ll retire when every public safety threat, national security threat, child rapist is eradicated from this country.” pic.twitter.com/1IHOpeYaa1
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 28, 2025
Rubio, speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, echoed that sentiment, accusing the media of misleading the public with emotional, but inaccurate, portrayals. “You make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed a 2-year-old and threw him on an airplane. That’s misleading. That’s just not true,” Rubio said, visibly frustrated by the mischaracterizations.
.@RealTomHoman on his trip to Rochester, NY: “I don’t think any elected mayor, any elected governor should want… public safety threats walking through their community… an HSI agent called for emergency assistance. Officers of Rochester PD responded… they got disciplined.” pic.twitter.com/zrHJiPc1YX
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 28, 2025
The controversy was fueled last week when a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana, Terry Doughty, questioned whether due process had been adequately followed in the deportation of a two-year-old girl identified in court documents as V.M.L. Doughty expressed concern that the child may have been deported alongside her mother without sufficient judicial review, even as her U.S.-citizen father wanted her to remain in the country.
.@RealTomHoman NUKES a Fake News reporter: “Let’s address that. Trump said Mexico was going to pay for the wall. They have in a roundabout way, have they not? Putting 10,000 military on their northern and southern border… We’re saving millions of dollars every day on detention,… pic.twitter.com/bYJxMmkaz3
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 28, 2025
But Homan didn’t mince words in his rebuttal. “I disagree with the judge. It was due process,” he said, emphasizing that the deported mother had received full hearings and decisions at significant taxpayer expense. He framed it as a fundamental issue of parental rights: “You can decide to take that child with you, or you can decide to leave a child here with a relative or another spouse.”
.@RealTomHoman: “We’ve got to ensure that not one ounce of fentanyl comes across the border to kill Americans… it’s an emergency until we shut it down. It’s an emergency until the cartels are wiped off the face of this earth. @POTUS is committed to saving every life.” pic.twitter.com/93XVe8Wnx6
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 28, 2025
This isn’t merely a matter of logistics. It’s Parenting 101, as Homan bluntly put it — and it’s a decision that, fundamentally, rests with the parent. Rubio added that U.S. citizen children who leave with their deported parents are free to return, should arrangements be made with relatives or legal guardians remaining in the U.S.
Beyond the two-year-old’s case, outrage also flared over a four-year-old child with stage 4 cancer who was reportedly sent back to their mother’s home country without proper medical support. Lawyers representing the child alleged gaps in medical coordination during travel, fueling further scrutiny.
