First, They Came for the Immigrants. Now, the Citizens.

The next 100 days will decide how far they go.

We're now at the end of the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, and we're witnessing something many feared but hoped wouldn't happen: U.S. citizenship becoming conditional rather than absolute.

The Reality on the Ground

In recent weeks, multiple verified cases have emerged of U.S. citizen children being deported alongside their undocumented parents:

• A 2-year-old U.S. citizen was deported to Honduras with their mother, prompting a federal judge to express "strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."

• A 4-year-old U.S. citizen with a rare form of metastatic stage 4 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; their 7-year-old sibling was deported as well.

• A 10-year-old U.S. citizen recovering from brain cancer was deported to a rural part of Mexico despite having hospital documentation and having been previously allowed to travel to Houston for treatment.

These cases aren’t bureaucratic errors. They are a deliberate shift, where citizenship no longer guarantees protection, and the Trump administration is counting on us to accept it. 

Bear with me as I get personal for a moment: I am disgusted by what this administration is doing to these families, and especially to these children. Kids with cancer deserve medical care, not deportation. They deserve treatment, follow-up, and a fighting chance. To deport a child without their medication isn’t just cruel. It’s inhumane. It’s indefensible. It crosses a line no decent government should ever cross. This isn’t immigration policy. It’s cruelty, weaponized against the most vulnerable. And if we don’t call it what it is, if we don’t fight it now, it won’t stop at the border, or at the hospital doors.

The Blueprint for Dismantling Protections

The policies enabling these deportations align precisely with Project 2025, the administration's published blueprint. This plan explicitly calls for:

• Ending the Flores Settlement Agreement, which removes court oversight and allows for indefinite detention of migrant children while also affecting U.S. citizen siblings caught in enforcement sweeps.

• Transferring custody of children from Health and Human Services (HHS) welfare experts to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enforcement agents.

• Creating a massive border and immigration superagency by merging Customs & Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Department of Health and Human Services ​​Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), and the immigration courts (EOIR) into a single Cabinet-level department, consolidating unprecedented power over who belongs in America.

• Weakening asylum protections for unaccompanied minors and expanding detention powers.

The real-world implementation of these policies is already visible in the administration's actions:

• Mixed-status families are being targeted, with U.S. citizen children treated as collateral damage in deportation operations.

• Legal protections for children are being dismantled one by one.

• When judges have attempted to intervene, they've faced threats and more recently have been arrested. The White House recently refused to rule out arresting federal judges, even Supreme Court justices, who oppose its immigration crackdowns.

The Erosion of Citizenship

The administration's defenders claim that "having a U.S. citizen child doesn't make you immune from the laws of the country." But what law did these children break?

In America, citizenship is supposed to mean something. Due process is supposed to mean something. Deporting citizens, especially children, without due process isn't law enforcement. It's lawbreaking by the state itself.

The dangerous precedent is clear: if citizenship can be stripped away by executive whim for some, it can eventually be stripped from anyone. A society where your rights depend on the government's mood is not a democracy. It's authoritarianism.

It’s precisely why we need to pay close attention to the direct challenge to constitutional protections that’s about to come to a head. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on May 15 regarding President Trump's executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship, with a decision expected by late June or early July that could fundamentally reshape who qualifies as an American citizen by birth. 

The Historical Warning Signs

History teaches us to recognize these patterns. When governments begin targeting the most vulnerable populations, the circle of those considered "other" inevitably expands. Consider:

In Nazi Germany, the White Rose movement, university students, and their professors, distributed leaflets exposing Hitler's crimes at enormous personal risk. Sophie Scholl, executed at just 21, asked: "How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause?"

During Argentina's "Dirty War," the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo marched weekly in Buenos Aires wearing white headscarves embroidered with the names of their disappeared children. Their silent visibility shattered the regime's wall of silence.

These examples remind us that resistance often begins with refusing to look away from injustice.

What Comes Next

The deportation of U.S. citizen children isn't the endpoint. It's the test run. Project 2025 is a 180-day plan to fundamentally restructure the system before effective opposition can mobilize. We're now 100 days in.

If the government can deport some citizens today, what prevents it from targeting political opponents tomorrow? What stops them from stripping dissenters of citizenship altogether?

This isn't improvisation or overreach by individual agents. It's a documented plan being methodically implemented. The Heritage Foundation's agenda explicitly calls for:

• Mass deportations inside the U.S.

• Criminalization of humanitarian aid groups.

• Expansion of detention powers.

• The gutting of long-standing asylum protections.

• Imposition of political loyalty tests for immigrants.

The Choice Before Us

The next phase will move even faster as the administration accelerates the implementation of its immigration and citizenship policies. The erosion of protections, expansion of detention authority, and acceleration of deportations are set to escalate.

Communities across America face a choice: to remain silent or to resist. During the Nazi occupation, the people of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small French village, collectively protected Jews fleeing deportation. They didn't wait for permission. They acted because it was right.

Across the country this weekend, Americans gathered in protest, refusing to look away, refusing to be silent, and calling attention to what is happening before it's too late.

The question now is whether we will heed history's warnings and act to protect America's fundamental promise: that citizenship means something, that due process is non-negotiable, and that no one, especially a child, should be stripped of their rights because of who their parents are or where they came from.

The future they are planning isn't hidden. It's published proudly for anyone willing to look.

What You Can Do

• First and foremost, we need to demand that the Trump administration bring those children back to the United States immediately. 

• Contact your representatives to demand oversight hearings on the deportation of U.S. citizens.

• Support organizations providing legal representation to families with mixed immigration status.

• Stay informed and share verified information about these cases.

• Attend peaceful protests in your community.

More soon,

Olivia