Update:
4:49 p.m. May 9, 2025: The story has been updated with details from a press conference Friday.
Two U.S. citizen children deported to Mexico along with their mother, attorney says
The woman was deported to Mexico with three of her children on Wednesday morning. The two youngest children are U.S. citizens, according to an attorney who consulted with the family.
By Aarón Torres
AUSTIN — Attorneys consulting with the family of five who were deported to Mexico this week — along with two children who are U.S. citizens — said Friday that the mother was not given a choice to keep two children in the U.S. before all of them were sent to Mexico.
It’s the latest development involving Denisse Parra Vargas and her partner, Omar Gallardo Rodriguez, who were stopped by Texas Department of Public Safety troopers on April 30, near the campus of Dobie Middle School in North Austin.
The stop is what led to both of their deportations earlier this week, as both were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
However, Cori Hash, a senior staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and Daniel Hatoum, a senior supervising attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, accuse the federal government of deporting two U.S. citizens and not giving Parra Vargas the chance to speak with family members to see if her two youngest children could stay in the country.
The couple has three children who are 8, 5 and 4 years old. The two youngest were born in the United States.
The federal government cannot legally deport U.S. citizens, Hatoum said. On Friday, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, echoed an earlier statement from the agency and said that Parra Vargas chose to be removed with her children.
“Rather than separate their families, ICE asked the mothers if they wanted to be removed with their children or if they wanted ICE to place the children with someone safe the parent designates,” McLaughlin repeated Friday. “In this case, when Parra was taken into ICE custody she chose to bring her children with her to Mexico.”
Hatoum said that what DHS is doing when it comes to U.S. citizen children is “far worse” than telling the parents they will be separated from their children unless the minors leave the country.
“DHS is also presenting these families with a false choice, a choice between separation, between parents giving up children, and children giving up their parents, or being separated, and not being able to be with one another.”
Hash said she believes ICE is operating under the guise of “enforce first and ask questions later.”
Officials with the Mexican Consulate in Austin interviewed Gallardo Rodriguez while he was detained at the J.J. Pickle federal building downtown on April 30, said Carlos Enrique Gonzalez Echevarria, the director of the Department of Protection at the consulate. He told the officials his two youngest children were born in the United States.
Sheridan Nolen, DPS press secretary, said in a statement Thursday the trooper who conducted the traffic stop was assigned to a “strike team” alongside Homeland Security Investigations.
DPS developed “regional tactical strike teams across the state” to support federal agencies, including ICE, with “law enforcement services” at the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott, Nolen said.
The teams “focus on preventing, detecting and interdicting criminal activity—including the arrest of criminal illegal immigrants in Texas," Nolen said. “Strike teams are working in coordination with federal partners, including the newly established Homeland Security Task Force, to locate and arrest these individuals—a move that is undoubtedly making our state safer."
Both Gallardo Rodriguez and Parra Vargas are Mexican citizens. Gallardo Rodriguez has been deported three previous times, an ICE spokesperson said Friday, prior to his removal on Tuesday.
He has been convicted three times for driving under the influence, assaulting a family member and for illegally reentering the United States — a federal felony.
Parra Vargas came to the United States in order to flee violence in Mexico and seek protection. She failed to appear at an immigration court hearing and was issued a final deportation order in 2019.
Deportations
This is not the first time attorneys have accused President Donald Trump‘s administration of deporting U.S. citizens as it attempts to launch the largest deportation operation in the country’s history.
Last month, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union said three U.S. citizen children were deported to Honduras. One of the children who was deported was a 4-year-old with cancer.
After attorneys with the ACLU accused the administration of removing U.S. citizens, DHS published a news release April 29 saying the mothers chose to be deported with their children.
Hash said the pair deported Wednesday had family members in the country who could take care of their children, but the family members were not allowed to communicate with them once they were detained.
Michelle Lapointe, legal director for the American Immigration Council, said she has noticed a pattern where ICE does not give parents the opportunity to make the best decision for their children.
“The result is that you’re essentially exiling a U.S. citizen to a country that they don’t necessarily know or have any connection to when you’re not allowing parents to make arrangements for their children to remain,” she said in a phone interview.
After Gallardo Rodriguez was detained, Parra Vargas drove to San Antonio on May 2 and was given an ankle monitor, Hash told The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday. She was then told to go on Tuesday morning to an ICE facility in Pflugerville — a city on the northern edge of Austin. She went with her three children, and all were detained.
“I was actually on the phone with her at the time when the ICE agents instructed her to come inside, and her three children were detained at that point,” Hash said.
The man was deported on Tuesday, and the woman and her three children were deported Wednesday morning to Reynosa, Hash said, the border city across from McAllen.
In Friday’s news conference, Hatoum declined to say if attorneys will file a lawsuit or a legal challenge in court.
Hash said she has not spoken directly with the family since they were deported.
It’s unclear where the family is now. Hatoum declined to disclose their location to protect their privacy.
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