Immigration Attorney Says ICE Violated Hayward Family’s Due Process Before Deportation

Advocates and officials said Monday that U.S. immigration officers violated the due process rights of a Hayward mother seeking asylum when she was deported last week to Colombia along with her two young children, one of whom has severe disabilities.

At a press conference in Hayward, Rep. Eric Swalwell said his staff was able to deliver hearing aids to the 6-year-old child, who is deaf and was deported without the necessary medical hearing devices.

“My staff has just landed in Colombia and is placing the hearing devices back in the boy’s ear,” he told reporters. “We are also working with the Families Council on returning the family back to the United States under what’s called humanitarian parole, so he can return to his school for the deaf, which is where he belongs.”

The child attends the California School for the Deaf in Fremont, but was with his mother, Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez, 28, at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at 478 Tehama St. in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Rodriguez Gutierrez reported for what she believed was a “routine check-in,” because officials said they needed to renew photos of the children, ages 4 and 6, on file, according to Nikolas De Bremaeker, an attorney with Centro Legal De La Raza.

He said Monday that the family was detained after ICE t officials took photos and fingerprints of the children. Rodriguez Gutierrez migrated to the U.S. from Colombia four years ago and had no criminal record, according to De Bremaeker.

In a statement on Friday, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told KQED that Rodriguez Gutierrez was issued a final order of removal in November 2024. The department said she was given a choice to leave her children with a designated person or be deported with them, and “chose to be removed with her children.”

But De Bremaeker said Rodriguez Gutierrez was not given that choice. At the appointment, he said, she was pressured to sign a document she could not understand, and when she refused, she and her two children were put into a van and arrested.

“ICE at no point explained to Ms. Rodriguez Gutierrez what was happening,” he told reporters on Monday.

De Bremaeker said that throughout the arrest, Rodriguez Gutierrez had pleaded with officials to allow her to get medical equipment the 6-year-old needed from another family member who was outside of the ICE office but was denied.

“It’s incredibly cruel to rip a child, as they are thriving and not only using the assistive devices that they need … out of this incredibly brave and strong progress that he has made,” De Bremaeker said Friday, noting that sign language in Colombia is different from the American Sign Language the young student had been learning here.

He said that in the days following their detention, ICE violated the family’s due process rights by repeatedly misleading immigration attorneys about their whereabouts. De Bremaeker was not able to locate the family until Friday, when he spoke with Rodriguez Gutierrez and confirmed that she had been deported to Colombia.

“We were told at every point that the family was at a different location, and even up to last night when I spoke with ICE, they told me a different location than where they actually were,” he told reporters last week.

He said Monday that the confusion prevented attorneys from filing emergency motions to stop their deportation in the right jurisdiction, and that Rodriguez Gutierrez was also blocked from invoking humanitarian protections that could have stopped the deportation of her deaf son.

He called on Congress to launch an inquiry into the due process violations and compel DHS to bring the family home.

“They promised that they would deport violent criminals. Now, they are deporting kids with disabilities,” Swalwell said. “If you want to deport a cartel boss, everyone here will help you pack their bags. But if you’re coming for a 6-year-old, you have to go through us. We will not stand by why ICE tears our families apart and endangers innocent children.

“What happened here was not about public safety … It makes the country darker,” he said.

KQED’s Juan Carlos Lara contributed to this report.