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The Deportation of 5-Year-Old Liam Tadeo Signals a Darker Era for Immigration Policy
Five-year-old Liam Tadeo and his dad, Victor Martinez Nieto, planned to spend the last day of summer before kindergarten playing soccer. Instead, on Sunday, Aug. 16, on the way to Liam’s game, ICE agents pulled them over, arrested them and sent both father and son to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas.
Victor begged ICE to release Liam to his mom, but according to their attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, ICE ignored the request. (ICE did not respond to a request for comment.)
It became clear that if Victor—who does not have legal status in the United States—chose to fight his detention or deportation, he risked losing Liam. DHS would likely treat Liam as an “unaccompanied minor” and send him to the Office of Refugee Resettlement for placement in a shelter or foster care, despite the presence of his mother and other family members ready and able to care for him.
The family decided to accept the deportation order, despite the wrenching consequences of taking Liam from his family and his home. At least, this way, he will be with his dad in Mexico.
ICE deported Liam and Victor on Aug. 28.
According to Lincoln-Goldfinch, Liam wasn’t able to say goodbye to his mother.
Such cruelty has become the norm in Trump’s immigration regime, but it is carried out quietly and with brutal efficiency. ICE arrested more than 46,000 people in July alone; for the first time, arrests of people without a criminal record surpassed the number of individuals arrested based (however tangentially) on a past criminal arrest or conviction.
Change didn’t come in time for Liam and his family, but hundreds of thousands of children, regardless of their immigration status, can still be protected. Restoring a fair and just system demands political courage, public outrage, and major policy reform. But it begins by exposing the subtle, despicable tactics that turn children like Liam Tadeo into pawns of immigration policy.
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‘If We Didn’t Do It, Who Would?’: Meet the N.C. College Students Leading the Fight for Campus Voting Access
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MAGA Is Using Kai Trump and Usha Vance to Soften Trump’s Anti-Woman Image. Don’t Be Fooled.
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Heidi Overton and the Overton Window
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Talking Back to Dobbs: Federal Judge Says Idaho Can’t Force Pregnant Women to ‘Endure All Harm Short of Death’
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‘Chaos and Uncertainty’: Trump’s Mail-Voting Restrictions Can Now Proceed—But the Legal Fight Is Far From Over
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Was Mary Oliver a Feminist?
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After Dobbs, the ERA Offers a New Path to Abortion Rights
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Justices Sotomayor and Jackson Sound the Alarm on SCOTUS’ Dangerous Deference to Trump on Mail-In Voting
In this episode, Dr. Goodwin breaks down what the latest Supreme Court ruling on voting rights actually says and what it doesn’t. (Of course, it means everyone’s hair is on fire.) Given that this Supreme Court has tried in every way possible to make it more difficult for people to vote, dismantling the Voting Rights Act—an act that had been supported over the years by both Republicans and also Democrats—what hot mess is next?
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was one that had been embraced over the years strongly by Republicans and Democrats. As Dr. Goodwin discusses, this Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has unraveled it, knowingly pulling the thread in order to disintegrate of one of the most essential pieces of legislation in American history, which protected all Americans. She reminds us that the very first suffragists in the United States were white men who had been dispossessed from the right to vote because they were not wealthy. Sit back and take a listen.
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- Women’s Equality Day: Many Gains, Still Work To Do
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- North Carolina State Legislature Advances New Restrictions on Voting
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Beyond Abortion: How the ERA Could Transform Pregnancy, Work and Family Life
On Women’s Equality Day, the unfinished fight for constitutional equality extends far beyond abortion. State equal rights amendments—and, ultimately, a robust federal ERA—could reshape how the law treats pregnancy, motherhood, work and family life.
Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, says state ERAs could be used to counter discrimination against pregnant women. Chu uses the example of a Tennessee case last year where a pregnant woman was denied prenatal care because she was unmarried.
“If they’re only asking about marriage in the specific context of pregnancy, then they’re treating pregnancy differently from other medical conditions,” she says. “And the other theory [of discrimination] is that they’re asking this question because they want women to be married before getting pregnant, enforcing the stereotype that only married women should receive prenatal care or should have pregnancies that are recognized.”
“I can imagine a robust ERA that says that it is a violation of our equality rights to die or to face the risk of dying from something that one of the wealthiest nations in the world should have rendered as an anomaly, as an exceptional circumstance that just doesn’t happen here anymore,” University of California, Berkeley, law professor Khiara M. Bridges says.
“The ERA can give us a real basis for making more intersectional arguments about equality, and pushing courts to consider the intersection of sex discrimination and race discrimination in ways that they have been unwilling to do until now.”
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‘Everybody Needs Somebody’: A Single Mother on Guaranteed Income, Community and Making It Work
Front & Center, a series from Ms. magazine and Springboard to Opportunities, puts the voices of Black women most affected by today’s policy debates at the center of the conversation. The series highlights the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which provides Black mothers living in federally subsidized housing with $1,000 per month for one year.
Candace, a 33-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., received one year of guaranteed income through the trust. She is working toward her life insurance license and dreams of starting a business helping people with cancer find high-quality wigs—all while building a more secure future for her children.
“Motherhood is hardest when you’re doing it by yourself, period,” Candace writes. “I want people to understand that the only way this works is if we help each other. There is no way around it. Everybody needs a community. Everybody needs somebody.
“Everything I do is based around my kids. Don’t invite me if my kids can’t come.
“The help that is supposed to be available for working mothers through government programs can be iffy. Unless you are completely unemployed, it can feel like you do not receive anything. But we are still struggling. We still live paycheck to paycheck, and people expect us to provide food out of that too. It is not realistic.”
