A Bay Area child who attended a school for the deaf was summarily detained and deported, alongside his mother and brother, this week during an immigration office visit, prompting the state’s superintendent of schools to call on the Trump administration to return him to the United States.
According to a KTVU report and a news release sent Friday from state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, the 7-year-old child was removed from the country following what was supposed to be a check-in visit at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in San Francisco. The child and his family reportedly fled from Colombia to escape an abusive relationship from a man with gang ties in that country.
Thurmond, who is one of several Democrats vying to become governor in this year’s midterm elections, said Friday he was calling on Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma senator tapped by President Trump to serve as the new Secretary of Homeland Security, to “help find the child and return him to California.”
The child, who lived in Hayward, attended the California School for the Deaf in Fremont, and while being detained he was separated from vital assistive equipment to help him hear, according to the news release. The family’s attorney told KTVU that the family arrived in Colombia on Thursday.
“I am deeply disturbed that a 7-year-old Deaf student from our State Special Schools, who was home sick from school, was detained and deported without access critical medical devices that support him to hear. This innocent child is being deprived of both education and basic, essential communication,” Thurmond said in the news release. “This unnecessary cruelty must end. The federal administration gave inaccurate information to the family’s attorney, preventing them from being located during detention or from accessing due process.”
That latter remark refers to a claim by the child’s family attorney Nikolas De Bremaeker, of Centro Legal de la Raza, that advocates trying to locate the family were initially told they were in Louisiana or Washington State, when they were actually being held in Phoenix. That, he told KTVU, impeded efforts to submit emergency court filings to prevent their removal from the country without due process.
Thurmond, who along with the child’s school sent letters to immigration officials to return the boy to California, is holding a news conference Friday afternoon to further call on them to reverse the actions.
“No child should be ripped from their home community and hidden in a detention center, especially not a Deaf child who is being deprived of the ability to communicate and understand what is happening to him,” he said. ” am calling on the federal government to return our student to his school community now.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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