Migrant Taken To Texas Hospital To Give Birth is Now Facing 'Expedited' Deportation

A Guatemalan mother who gave birth at a Texas hospital this week is now facing "expedited" deportation, with an attorney warning about the health risk such an outcome could pose both to the woman and her child.

The Arizona Daily Star reported that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have been posted outside the woman's room and are preventing her from speaking to an attorney.

Attorney Luis Campos told the outlet that the woman was apprehended by Border Patrol earlier this week after unlawfully entering the United States. She was placed under detention but agents took her to the hospital to give birth on Wednesday.

Campos was contacted by an advocate who told him the woman wanted to speak to a lawyer, but he has been prevented from entering the room after being told he needs a signed document identifying him as her lawyer. He said he had the firm but neither he nor a hospital worker wouldn't be let inside the room so the woman could sign it.

"I'm asking them to put her in deportation proceedings and to release her. They have the discretion to do that, so that she can be with her baby and find accommodations" as the case proceeds, Campos told the outlet.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesman John Mennell told the outlet that the woman is subjected to expedited removal, a process that does not include her seeing an immigration judge. She will be given the choice to take the baby with her or not.

Trump officials have stood by the policy, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio defending the removal of two U.S. citizen children last Sunday, saying that their mother made the decision to take them along when being deported rather than leaving them in the country.

"The children went with their mother. Those children are U.S. citizens. They can come back into the United States if there's their father or someone here who wants to assume them," he said in an interview with Meet The Press.

The children in question taken to Honduras with their mother, with press reporting that they didn't get the chance to speak with attorneys. One of them has Stage 4 cancer and is unable to access medication, the National Immigration Project (NIP) said.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty has ordered a hearing regarding the case, saying it looked like the government deported the children with "no meaningful due process."

Rubio, however, stood by the decision, saying: "If someone is in this country unlawfully, illegally, that person gets deported. If that person is with a 2-year-old child or has a 2-year-old child and says, I want to take my child with me, well, then what? You have two choices."

"You can say yes, of course you can take your child, whether they're a citizen or not, because it's your child; or you can say yes, you can go, but your child must stay behind. And then your headlines would read: 'U.S. holding hostage 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 7-year-old, while mother deported," Rubio added.