ICE Director Blames 2-Year-Old Child's Killing On Deported Mother

In 2022, a pregnant undocumented migrant crossed over the U.S.-Mexico border with her sister in hopes of finding a better life, one that would let them be free of the violent men they had left to escape, according to her attorney. A few years later, she was swept up in the mass deportation agenda of President Donald Trump, forced to leave her home in Florida, and forced to leave her two-year-old child with a relative, who now stands accused of murdering that child. Predictably, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) responded to the tragedy by blaming it on the child’s mother.

According to the Washington Post, ICE has accused Wendy Hernandez Reyes of being responsible for the horrific death of her son, 2-year-old Orlin Hernandez Reyes, who was placed with his uncle, Samuel Maldonado Erazo, after her arrest. In fact, Maldonado was handed the responsibility of taking care of Orlin and his three cousins, the oldest of whom was 7, while Orlin’s mother and her sister waited in ICE detention to be deported to Honduras.

From the Post:

Maldonado had once served in the Honduran military, a co-worker later told investigators, and now lived in the Florida Panhandle. He was separated from Orlin’s aunt, and police said he drank heavily and whipped the children with a wire. Orlin repeatedly endured the worst of the abuse.

An autopsy showed he had multiple broken bones. There were signs his tiny body had been sexually battered.Authorities allege Maldonado repeatedly struck Orlin in the head, stomped on his body and burned his skin with a lighter. His hands bore bruises, a sign that Orlin had tried to shield himself from the blows. The coroner listed his cause of death as multiple blunt force traumas.

Maldonado has been charged with murder and pleaded not guilty.

Now, ICE officials could have employed at least a modicum of empathy in the wake of a parent experiencing a parent’s worst nightmare, but that would require undocumented brown people to be regarded as human beings — and that just isn’t the MAGA way. So, instead, ICE Director Todd Lyons, who announced last month that he’ll be stepping down from his position — because it seems almost like nobody in command at ICE or Border Patrol can hold on to their jobs under the Trump administration — responded by condemning Hernandez Reyes as a mother who “abandoned” her child to the man who allegedly killed him.

“Reyes chose to leave her son here with a violent murderer who took his life,” he said.

According to the Post, Lyons indicated that Maldonado is also an undocumented immigrant who “never should’ve been in this country in the first place,” which, if true, calls into question why he was allowed to care for the children in the first place.

But before we can even begin to untangle that thread, there’s the question of whether Hernandez Reyes was truly given a choice about what should be done with her son. According to her attorney, Reyes wanted to take her son with her, but that request was ignored by the arresting agents.

More from the Post:

But a review of court records and the mother’s own account contradict ICE’s narrative and raise questions about how the Trump administration is deporting scores of parents, many without their children. Hernandez was detained by a sheriff’s deputy in Alabama while on her way to work.Local law enforcement agencies are increasingly carrying out immigration enforcement as part of the president’s mass deportation campaign.

The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office handed Hernandez over to ICE. She was deported back to Honduras less than a month after her arrest.

Hernandez does not match the profile of the “worst of the worst” criminals that the Department of Homeland Security has promised to prioritize for removal. She is a victim of domestic violence, her lawyer said, and has no criminal record. But in President Donald Trump’s second term, the stated goal is to remove as many undocumented immigrants as possible. That has increasingly included parents of young children, who are being placed in foster care, living with relatives or even left to fend for themselves — with little or no follow-up to ensure they are safe.

Nothing in federal law requires ICE — or any other agency — to check in with a child’s caregiver after detaining their parents, attorneys say. Agency policy calls for following parents’ wishes for their children, including removing them together, but immigration lawyers say requests to be deported as a familyare often ignored. The lack of safeguards for the children left behind is considered a glaring blind spot in a system going full-tilt to deport record numbers of immigrants.

Hernandez said she repeatedly urged ICE officers to let her son go with her, but her pleas were met with silence.

“How could I abandon my son, if my son was the love of my life?” Hernandez, 29, said in an interview. “I did everything with my son. I am not a bad mother who left my child with a killer.”

So, just to recap: A pregnant woman, who fled her country to get away from violent men, was arrested and deported, while her son was placed with another allegedly violent man, despite her pleading that her son stay with her, and then that toddler was killed violently and horrifically, which, according to ICE’s director, was all the mother’s fault, absolving the agency, which didn’t bother checking in on the child because the law doesn’t say it has to. Also, the mother, who has no criminal record to speak of, is yet another migrant who was targeted by ICE and the Trump administration, which has claimed repeatedly that it is going after the “worst of the worst” in its immigration crackdown, which hasn’t been true since it began.

By the way, according to the New York Times, a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution suggests more than 100,000 children have been separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and that roughly three-quarters of those children are likely to be U.S. citizens.

Trump’s mass deportation agenda has been nothing more than a perpetual display of government cruelty — fueled by xenophobia and racist propaganda — for which the government always blames the victims.

SEE ALSO:

2 Judges Grant Stay For Exonerated Man Trump Admin Is Trying To Deport

Trump Scales Back Mass Deportation Effort, ICE Arrests, Lawsuits Decline

ICE Director Blames 2-Year-Old Child's Killing On Deported Mother was originally published on newsone.com