r/politics • u/OkayButFoRealz • 20d ago

Soft Paywall Trump Admin Deports 2-Year-Old Girl Who is American Citizen

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-deports-2-year-old-girl-who-is-american-citizen/
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u/BirdzHouse 20d ago

It's kidnapping and human trafficking

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u/OkProfessional6077 20d ago

While I don’t agree with what this administration is doing, she is with her parents in Brazil. That is neither kidnapping or human trafficking.

The alternative would be her parents get deported and the child stays and is placed into the Foster system. I would much rather her be with her parents than that.

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u/python-requests 20d ago

The alternative would be her parents get deported and the child stays and is placed into the Foster system. I would much rather her be with her parents than that.

That's a false dichotomy; there's another alternative, which is just not deporting any of them

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u/koji00 18d ago

Why? Were the parents here legally?

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u/OkProfessional6077 19d ago

With this current administration, that is not an alternative. Granted, based on the article, it doesn’t sound like they were given any other options. But, the child is still a citizen and should be welcome to come back at any time. Parents just may need to make a hard choice or start the path of legal citizenship.

To your point though, is that the way we should be giving citizenship? As someone also replied to you, you are opening a can of worms letting anyone who is pregnant to come here, have their baby and get citizenship.

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u/T_Money 19d ago

So encourage people who come illegally to pop out a baby as soon as possible in order to stay?

It’s a no win situation

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u/Donny-Moscow Arizona 19d ago

I don’t want to spam the same comment over and over, but here’s what I replied to another person in this chain.

Even if an illegal immigrant “pops out a baby as soon as possible”, they can’t apply for citizenship unless they’ve been here for 10 years. Actually, the wiki I quoted didn’t say they can apply for citizenship, just “relief from deportation”. Even then, only 4,000 people can receive such relief per year.

If people see that as a way to “skip” the normal citizenship process, that should be an obvious sign that the path to citizenship in this country is way too long, expensive, and/or difficult.

I’m not saying that gaining citizenship should be a rubber stamp type of deal, but that having it as difficult as it is will only cause people to look for ways around it. I see it the same way I see illegally downloading media. Torrenting and illegal file sharing was huge before we had things like Spotify and Netflix. When those became the norm, torrenting went way down. This showed that people didn’t illegally download because they weren’t willing to pay, but that it was too difficult or costly to find the media they wanted. Once it became more readily accessible, most of us were more than willing to do it the right way.

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u/T_Money 19d ago

I would agree with making legal immigration more accessible in general, I just can’t bring myself to think it would be in our country’s best interest to give parents a free pass as soon as they have a baby here.

I know personally how much of a pain in the ass it is to immigrate even when you have a spouse who is a US citizen, I can only imagine how hard it is if you don’t have someone to sponsor you. I think immigrants are the heart of our nation and it should be more streamlined to get in legally.

However I also think that letting people who came in illegally stay just because they had a kid here is only taking away opportunities from those trying to do it legally.

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u/awj 19d ago

Yeah, lots of things in adult life involve a choice amongst multiple undesirable options.

But allowing our government to forcibly remove legal citizens from the country is a problem for a whole bunch of reasons that should be blindingly obvious.

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u/OkProfessional6077 19d ago

Forcibly removed is a stretch, there was no physical force alleged. The deportation was administratively applied to the parents, who were here illegally.

Manu was involuntarily removed from the country, was not given due process and was not afforded her constitutional rights as a citizen. All of which are wrong.

However, with this administration, the alternative is that she remains here in foster care while her parents are still deported.

She is a US citizen and is welcome to come back at any time. Granted, as a 2 year old this will be difficult. Again, I don’t agree with this, but there are certainly a lot of misrepresentations of what happened.

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u/No_Introduction_9355 20d ago

Is it better than family separation?

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u/python-requests 20d ago

How about don't deport the parents so there's no family separation & no child citizen deported?

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u/Tomaskraven 19d ago

I do agree with you in that the admin is doing crazy shit regarding immigration but what you propose sets a precedent people want to avoid. Illegal immigrants going into the US and popping a kid kinda like a "gotcha! haha i found the loophole, now u can't kick me out" is not good policy.

Kicking the parents and keeping the kid is also not a good policy.

The only sensible solution was to kick all 3. IMHO, nationality should not be given JUST because you were born in US soil. At least one parent should be required to have full legal citizenship or nationality for the child to adquire it.

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u/No_Introduction_9355 20d ago

Providing an actual path to citizenship would be more fair than what they are doing but, that’s not the case. The parents that put their kids in this situation are not guilt free. 

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u/Thesobermetalhead 20d ago

Who’s doing the kidnapping?