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This sounds like a real tangle. If the news reports are saying the two year old is a US citizen, but nothing about her 11 year old sister, that makes it sound like only the 2 year old was born in the USA. If the mother has been attending ICE meetings for four years, that makes it sound like mother, father and first daughter arrived in the US about four to five years ago (or maybe longer, but after the elder girl was born since she's not, by the sounds of it, a US citizen).
It's unclear if the parents are married, married then divorced, or never married. Or who the sister-in-law with citizenship is; she could be the mother's sister, or she could be married to a brother of the father. That would be an even more remote relationship so no wonder the transfer of custody was held up.
Yeah, the reporting does make it sound like "they put a 2 year old all alone on a plane back to Honduras even though she's a US citizen by birth". For all the complaining about separating parents and children, at least both daughters and the mother were sent back all together. The father's status is also unclear so he could be on the next flight out.
The aim of the reporting here does seem to be "the 2 year old has a right to be here by virtue of her citizenship, you can't break up a family, you can't leave a 2 year old on her own, so you have to permit the sister and father and mother to remain as well".
It's a genuine problem: a citizen can't be deported, but what if the citizen is a minor (a very young minor as in this case)? With no closer legal family members than a possible aunt by marriage?
They can be assigned a guardian ad litem to advocate for their best interests in family court, the same as any other minor in the USA - citizen or not - with thorny custody problems. The best solution will vary case-by-case, but that's what courts are for.
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I would assume in that case the foster system is the place to put them
Foster system is not great. I genuinely think "being with mom and sister back in mom's native country" is better than that.
Well, of course it's better to be with your biological parents in the mayority of cases. But the point I was making is that if it isn't possible for the child to be with them, there are other options.
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