Texas Deports Mom Who Missed Immigration Hearing For Emergency C-Section

The Lone Star State, in its neverending quest to compete with Florida for the title of Worst State in Existence, has done something awful — something other than legislatively murdering women who have miscarriages via draconian anti-choice laws, loosening gun regulations despite mass shootings being a seemingly daily occurrence, targeting the LGBTQIA+ community, preventing schools from teaching about the horrors of slavery, suppressing votes in “certain” targeted communities, and offering Trump land on which to build his concentration camps. Frankly, when it comes to Texas, the better question is “What horrific inhumane things aren’t they doing?” The latest inhumane thing is that Texas deported a mom who missed an immigration hearing for an emergency C-section.

Texas has a reputation in America that is similar to that of herpes — a constant irritating presence that occasionally creates very visible patches of what-the-f*ck on our nation. And why not? Texas has the highest execution rate in the entire country. The state chose to limit its citizens’ access to healthcare because its politicians don’t like Obama and continues to limit those options today. Texas targets marginalized communities with voter suppression efforts because of the ever-present fear that “those people” might vote for Democrats. Texas was the last state to formally (and extremely reluctantly) outlaw slavery — and naturally wants to make sure no one in Texas grows up knowing what Juneteenth is, so the state prevents schools from teaching about slavery in any meaningful way. Texas uses “religious freedom” to discriminate against the LGBTQIA+ community, and hates immigrants so much that Governor Greg Abbott formed what amounts to a private army to use on border crossers.

The GOP will tell you that the horrific measures the GOP — especially in Texas — takes against immigrants are necessary to protect America. But GOP policy doesn’t address criminals as they claim. In fact, Trump released twice as many undocumented immigrants who were charged with crimes than did Biden and ultimately made America less safe. But he did throw a lot of families in concentration camps and separate children from their loved ones. His next term is shaping up to be even worse, as he is set to target more vulnerable groups while largely ignoring criminals. But Texas is ready to go along with whatever plan Trump has, with land already promised for Trump’s new camps. And the state is still dutifully deporting harmless people — like Cristina Geraldyn Salazar-Hinojosa.

Texas Deports Mom Over An Emergency C-Section

If you want a preview of how the Trump presidency will go, just ask Trump DHS pick Tom Homan, who says that families including both undocumented immigrants and US citizens “can be deported together.” This isn’t just rhetoric. This is the situation Salazar-Hinojosa and her family find themselves in after Texas deported her for missing an immigration hearing she was forced to miss because she was recovering from delivering one of those babies Texas claims to care about via emergency C-section.

Salazar-Hinojosa gave birth to twins in September, but — like many women — needed to recover, especially considering the need for an emergency C-section. Doctors ordered her to recover at home, which necessarily involves not putting one’s body through unnecessary stress. As a result, she wasn’t able to make it to her October 9 immigration hearing and needed to postpone it. So Texas just deported her and the children, who are US citizens via birthright citizenship, which Trump wants to end.

But Texas loves surprises, so it isn’t exactly shocking that she was told the hearing would be rescheduled and assumed everything was fine. The family was instructed to attend a meeting to discuss the case. They showed up, but instead of handling things like rational humans, ICE arrested Salazar-Hinojosa and her children.

“This case shouldn’t have gone to this extreme,” Immigration lawyer Isaias Torres says. “There were options, legal options that were available and he was not given that opportunity. “They were shocked and surprised that they were separated.”

 “ICE does not deport U.S. citizens,” an ICE spokesperson says. “Any decision for minors with U.S. citizenship to depart the U.S. with their parents is up to the parents.” But what choice does she have? In what universe should a mother be separated from her children, who would be forced to stay with either her or their father, who is a US citizen? Should he have to leave as well, to be with his wife and children? This is the position the state of Texas and ICE have apparently taken.

Deporting US citizens is not something new ICE is doing. A 2021 Government Accountability Office report found that in a five-year period, ICE arrested 674, detained 121, and deported 70 people who were at least potentially U.S. citizens. Anyone born in the United States is constitutionally guaranteed citizenship even if both parents are “illegals” as the Right calls them in an effort to demonize Immigrants.

If Texas and Republicans want to deport rapists, murderers, sex and drug traffickers, and other horrible, they can do that all they want. However, immigrants are a large part of what has always made America great, including paying $165 billion to Social Security and $45.1 billion to Medicare in 2019 alone. Getting rid of good, hardworking immigrants (which includes most of them) via mass deportations as Trump has suggested will not only cripple Medicare and Social Security (which Trump wants to eliminate anyway) but it will have disastrous effects on housing and grocery stores’ prices and numerous other industries that will feel the pain.