On Sunday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said The Washington Post story that three U.S. citizen children were deported was “misleading.”
Rubio said, “On the headline, that’s a misleading headline. Three U.S. citizens, ages 4, 7 and 2, were not deported, their mothers were here illegally in this country were deported, and the children went with their mother. If those children are U.S. citizens, they can come back to their father, someone who wants to assume them. Ultimately who was deported was their mothers who were here legally. The children went with their mothers. You guys make it sound like ICE kicked down the door and grabbed a two-year-old and threw them on an airplane, and it’s misleading, and that is not true.”
Host Kristen Welker said, “Is it the U.S. policy to deport children, even U.S. citizens’ families, and I hear what you’re saying, without due process to be very clear there?”
Rubio said, “No, no, no. Again, if someone is in this country unlawfully, illegally that person gets deported. If that person is with a 2-year-old child and says I want to take my child with me then you have two choices. You can say yes, course, you can take your child whether they’re a citizen or not because it is your child or say yes, you can go, but your child must stay behind. Then your headline would read U.S. holding hostage 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 7-year-old I imagine the children have fathers in the United States. That’s up to their families to decide. Children go with their parents. Parents decide where their children go. The U.S. deported their mothers who were illegally in America.”
Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN
