The Republicans who chose Donald Trump to be president of the United States must be over-the-moon delighted to see his administration addressing the greatest threat America faces: children who are U.S. citizens.
That's right. We recently learned a 2-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer - all citizens - were whisked out of the country on April 25 and deposited in Honduras with their mothers, who were being deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Regarding the 2-year-old, who, if I'm sure, posed the biggest threat of them all, a Trump-appointed federal judge wrote that he has a "strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process." The child's father wanted her to remain with him in the United States, but the mother and child were spirited away with a speed that tells you all you need to know about the process.
Now I assume from their lack of outrage that Republican lawmakers are in favor of citizen-toddlers being denied due process. I mean, have these kids really earned it yet?
I also assume folks out there cheering on Trump in the face of all available evidence and pitiful polling numbers - he has the lowest 100-day approval rating of any president in 80 years - are okey-dokey with ICE creating situations like this, described by the ACLU as: A "U.S. citizen child suffering from a rare form of metastatic cancer was deported without medication or the ability to consult with their treating physicians - despite ICE being notified in advance of the child's urgent medical needs."
That child, along with the other two, wound up in Honduras with the two mothers.
The Washington Post spoke to lawyers for the two families and reported that "both families were taken into custody while attending routine check-ins ... in New Orleans as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which allows individuals to remain in their communities while undergoing immigration proceedings. Lawyers say the families were taken to Alexandria, Louisiana, a three-hour drive from New Orleans, where they were prevented from communicating with their family members and legal representatives and then put on a flight to Honduras."
How dare these dangerous mothers, one of whom is pregnant, and their small children attempt to abide by the rules of our immigration system. It's an outrage!
Trump administration officials tried to downplay what happened, claiming the mothers wanted the children to stay with them as they were deported.
"No U.S. citizen child was deported," border czar Tom Homan told CBS News' "Face the Nation." "Deported means you got to be ordered ... by an immigration judge."
Sure, Jan. If that's what you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.
Lawyers for the two families made clear the mothers and their children were hauled off swiftly and given little to no contact with family or their legal representatives. In other words, due process was out the window here, and the mothers likely had no chance to figure out how to keep their children safe other than keeping them close.
Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney and Emory University law professor, summed the situation up succinctly for The Post: "It is clear that the U.S. government paid for this ticket - that means these children were deported. Whether they had (due) process or not, whether ICE appropriately followed the rules or not, these children were deported. The question you have to ask yourself is ‒ What's stopping this from happening to me and my kids?"
Well, maybe the MAGA crowd doesn't much care what happens to other people's kids. This is what they wanted, after all. This is the kind of cruelty they voted for when they punched a ballot for Trump.
And who cares that these kiddos are citizens, right? Trump promised to keep Americans safe, and one has to figure there are violent MS-K-through-12 gangs that lead up to MS-13. Or maybe the 2-year-old was a member of Tren de Wahhh-Wahhh?
When I read about the chaotic and cruel nature of these deportations and thought about the terror these children faced being rounded up, held by their presumably panicked mothers then flown by strangers to a country that isn't their own, I was tempted to ask of Trump-backing Republicans out there: When will this be bad enough to matter to you? At what point do you say, "This isn't what America should do to anyone, much less some of its most vulnerable young citizens"?
But then I remembered that this - all of it, every damn reckless, reprehensible bit of it - is exactly what Republicans wanted. It's what they knew full well was coming. It's what they voted for.
And it's the reality they can now reckon with as they flail about for a reason to justify gutless government-sponsored inhumanity.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk