Mirian Villalobos had plenty going for her. The 25-year-old had a dimpled son, a handsome husband, a new house, and a happy suspicion she was pregnant again.
Then, it unraveled.
On a balmy Sept. 6 in Wilmer, outside Dallas, she was pulled over by the police as she rode on the back of a motorcycle driven by her husband, 30-year-old Juan Espinoza. She was stopped for not wearing a helmet, but a routine check of her record found an arrest warrant. She'd been ordered to report for deportation in 2002.
Caught in the middle: an infant named Kevin Isaac, born a U.S. citizen with a father in the U.S. legally and a mother in the U.S. illegally. Ms. Villalobos was deported.
Unable to bear the separation from her son, now 9 months old, she returned to the U.S. in November and was detained in Arizona.
On Thursday she was deported again to Honduras – without seeing her young son and now six months pregnant, her husband says.
Her story is one echoing through many families with mixed immigration status, as a crackdown on illegal immigrants cleaves communities. There are 3.1 million children in the U.S. with one or two parents without legal immigration status in 2005, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
"This is all so grave," says Mr. Espinoza, perching his son on one arm at a Dallas restaurant. Little Kevin Isaac has his father's deep dimples and his mother's round eyes.Before the first deportation, an attorney for Ms. Villalobos had asked that she be allowed to stay in the U.S. on humanitarian grounds. The request was denied by the Dallas regional office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within the Homeland Security Department.
A U.S. citizen child confers no benefits to parents, or a parent who is in the U.S. illegally, except in very rare cases, said Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for ICE. Parents are ultimately responsible, he said.
"Any parent should take into consideration how their decisions to defy our nation's laws will affect their families," Mr. Rusnok said.
On Oct. 4, Ms. Villalobos was deported and flown to Tegucigalpa, the capital of her native Honduras.
As her husband tells it, Ms. Villalobos was left at the airport in a city she didn't know in a Central American country she left as a teenager. Immigration officials gave her a goodbye of "Que se vaya bien" – may it go well for you.
Honduras, with a population of 7.4 million, is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere with a per-capita income of $1,170 per year. In 2006, 20 percent of the economy's gross domestic product came from remittances, the money sent home to Honduras by its emigrants, according to the World Bank.
By comparison, remittances made up only about 3 percent of the GDP of Mexico, a nation of 104 million with a far stronger economy.
A risk for love
Once on Tegucigalpa's streets, Ms. Villalobos begged for money to make a phone call to her husband in Irving. Then, "she risked all," her husband said.
Over the next few weeks, she walked or rode in vehicles across three international borders to get back to her family. She joined a group of other migrants making their way to the U.S. border, and many of those days Ms. Villalobos didn't eat, her husband said. He was especially fearful of her passage through the Sonoran desert of Mexico.
"This is all for the love of her family, for her child, that she would risk so much," he said.
When she reached Arizona, she called her husband.
Ms. Villalobos had been detained by the Border Patrol in Hereford, not far from the international boundary.
She was held in a detention center in Florence, Ariz., as alien #78-930-458, before being deported.And Mr. Espinoza's nightmare replays. His wife is alone in Tegucigalpa without money, without family, and now visibly pregnant.
"I am so afraid that she will try to come again, and now she is so pregnant," Mr. Espinoza said. "We don't have a place to live over there. We have been here a long time now. She is asking for food on the street."
The scope of the crackdown against illegal immigrants in mixed-status families is raising new questions. And many are beginning to question the treatment of the most vulnerable of immigrants: women, pregnant women and their children.
The law and children
So many U.S. citizen children have been affected by deportations and worksite raids that the Urban Institute, a research center in Washington, D.C., is conducting a study to determine the different types of treatment in family courts and criminal courts vs. immigration courts. It was brought on in part by immigration raids a year ago at meatpacking plants in Cactus, Texas, and other locations owned by Swift & Co.
Joseph Hammell, a Minneapolis attorney assisting the Urban Institute, said there were few protections for citizen children caught in an immigration deportation involving parents in the U.S. unlawfully. There are no court-appointed attorneys, for example, he said.
"There is no one really looking out for the child," Mr. Hammell says. "This is one thing that has riled people.
"Our immigration laws seem to be inconsistent with our broader societal issues in terms of protecting children, and that inconsistency needs to be addressed, even if that means moderate reform in the statutes to protect the best interests of children."
The government will allow U.S. citizen children to accompany the parent or parents to their country of origin, says Mr. Rusnok, the ICE spokesman.
Rudy Castillo, Ms. Villalobos' attorney up until the first deportation, acknowledged that Ms. Villalobos' case was a difficult one. "There are more and more cases where there are no remedies or little remedy," Mr. Castillo said. "It depends on their previous run-ins with immigration. Those are all red flags for new relief."
Mr. Castillo didn't bring up the fact that Ms. Villalobos was still nursing her son at the time of her arrest. "What was conveyed to me was that she was in some kind of peril because of a new pregnancy," he said.
Under a 2000 memo reissued by ICE in mid-November, agents were reminded to identify arrestees who are, among other things, single parents of minor children, pregnant women, or nursing mothers.
While in detention, Ms. Villalobos received prenatal medical attention, according to an ICE document.
"All aliens with a final order are removed as long as they are medically cleared to fly," Mr. Rusnok said. "In the case of pregnant detainees, both mother and child are thoroughly evaluated."
Ms. Villalobos never saw her son while she was detained the first time in Haskell, Texas, 200 miles from Dallas, or in Arizona, her husband said. She was able to write a letter, though, in which she told her husband how she wanted to hold her son again.
Groups that want to tighten both legal and illegal immigration are also taking aim at the 14th Amendment, which provides birthright citizenship to children like Kevin Isaac Espinoza.
At Numbers USA, executive director Roy Beck says U.S. citizen children of an illegal immigrant aren't "an anchor" for staying in the U.S. Moreover, Numbers USA wants to change birthright citizenship provisions of the 14th Amendment.
"By federal law, these children have been made citizens," Mr. Beck says. "We, of course, advocate changing those laws."
Mr. Beck adds, "They should go home. They should all go home."
In Irving, the Rev. Pedro Portillo ministers to many Central American immigrant families, some with family members without authorization to be in the U.S. Many families now live in fear because a family member has been deported or may be deported, Mr. Portillo said.
"There are so many people like this," said the Salvadoran-born pastor. "So many are calling me. What are we going to do with so much pain?"
Since the first deportation, Mr. Espinoza has worked sporadically, by choice, as a long-haul truck driver, moving loads destined for Home Depot and Wal-Mart in out-of-state locations. He has work authorization under a provision known as Temporary Protected Status that has covered many Central Americans who fled the 1998 devastation of Hurricane Mitch. That natural disaster took an estimated 11,000 lives.
'I'm so desperate'
Mr. Espinoza cares for his son as best he can. But he says his best isn't nearly enough. He is two months behind on his mortgage payment of $1,127 on a 1,400-square-foot house. The tan house with brick-red trim sits on a street of spectacular pines and oaks. Already, he's received notice that he may lose it.
He leaves his son with a sitter when he is on the road, but the little boy grows sullen with each leave-taking, Mr. Espinoza said.
As little Kevin grows fussy. "Hola, nene" – hi, baby – he says, stroking his apple-cheeked son.
"The baby has suffered so much," he says. "I'm so desperate."
And now Mr. Espinoza must plan his next move. He says he doesn't know exactly what to do yet. He hasn't lived in Honduras for nearly a decade and his wife was gone almost as long.
One thing is certain, though, he says, "I cannot live with my family separated."
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Poverty
April 2008 
Jeff
Access: Public
