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They discovered their location through a highway exit sign that disclosed their ultimate location: Alexandria, Louisiana.

They traveled in the cargo area of an immigration enforcement vehicle – their possessions taken and passports retained by authorities. Rosario and her two children with citizenship, one of whom faces advanced renal cancer, lacked information about where immigration officials were directing them.

The initial encounter

The family unit had been apprehended at an required meeting near New Orleans on April 24. After being prevented from consulting their attorney, which they would subsequently allege in official complaints violated their rights, the family was relocated 200 miles to this small community in the heart of the region.

"Our location remained undisclosed," Rosario stated, answering inquiries about her ordeal for the first time after her family's case received coverage. "They instructed me that I shouldn't inquire, I asked where we were headed, but they remained silent."

The deportation procedure

The 25-year-old mother, 25, and her young offspring were forcibly removed to Honduras in the early morning hours the subsequent morning, from a small aviation facility in Alexandria that has become a center for mass deportation operations. The site houses a specialized holding facility that has been called a legal "void" by legal representatives with detained individuals, and it connects directly onto an runway area.

While the detention facility holds exclusively male adults, leaked documents indicate at least 3,142 mothers and children have been processed at the Alexandria airport on immigration transports during the initial three months of the current administration. Various detainees, like Rosario, are held in secret lodging before being sent abroad or relocated to other confinement locations.

Lodging restrictions

She was unable to identify which Alexandria hotel her family was taken to. "My recollection is we came in through a garage entrance, not the front door," she recalled.

"We felt like detainees in lodging," Rosario said, explaining: "My kids would attempt to approach the door, and the female guards would become angry."

Treatment disruptions

Rosario's young boy Romeo was diagnosed with metastatic kidney disease at the age of two, which had reached his lungs, and was receiving "ongoing and essential life-saving cancer treatment" at a specialized children's hospital in New Orleans before his arrest. His female sibling, Ruby, also a American national, was seven when she was taken into custody with her relatives.

Rosario "implored" guards at the hotel to allow her to use a telephone the night the family was there, she reported in federal court documents. She was ultimately granted one brief phone call to her father and informed him she was in Alexandria.

The after-hours locating effort

The family was roused at 2 a.m. the following morning, Rosario said, and taken directly to the airport in a government vehicle with another family also detained at the hotel.

Without her knowledge, her lawyers and supporters had searched throughout the night to find where the two families had been detained, in an bid for legal assistance. But they remained undiscovered. The legal representatives had made repeated requests to immigration authorities following the apprehension to stop the transfer and establish her whereabouts. They had been consistently disregarded, according to official records.

"This processing center is itself fundamentally opaque," said an immigration advocate, who is representing Rosario in ongoing litigation. "But in situations involving families, they will often not take them to the main center, but accommodate them at unidentified accommodations near the facility.

Legal arguments

At the heart of the legal action filed on behalf of Rosario and other individuals is the assertion that government entities have violated their own regulations governing the treatment of US citizen children with parents facing removal. The directives state that authorities "must provide" parents "sufficient time" to make choices about the "welfare or movement" of their underage dependents.

Government agencies have not yet addressed Rosario's claims in court. The Department of Homeland Security did not answer detailed questions about the allegations.

The aviation facility incident

"Once we got there, it was a largely vacant terminal," Rosario remembered. "Only deportation vehicles were coming in."

"Numerous transports appeared with other mothers and children," she said.

They were kept in the van at the airport for over four hours, seeing other transports come with men restrained at their hands and feet.

"That segment was distressing," she said. "The kids kept asking why everyone was chained hand and foot ... if they were criminals. I explained it was just part of the process."

The aircraft boarding

The family was then forced onto an aircraft, official records state. At roughly then, according to documents, an immigration field office director ultimately answered to Rosario's attorney – informing them a stay of removal had been denied. Rosario said she had not consented at any point for her two US citizen children to be deported abroad.

Attorneys said the scheduling of the apprehension may not have been accidental. They said the appointment – postponed repeatedly without reason – may have been scheduled to align with a removal aircraft to Honduras the next day.

"Authorities appear to funnel as many individuals as they can toward that airport so they can occupy the plane and deport them," commented a representative.

The aftermath

The entire experience has resulted in permanent damage, according to the court case. Rosario still experiences anxiety regarding threats and abduction in Honduras.

In a previously released statement, the Department of Homeland Security stated that Rosario "elected" to bring her children to the immigration check-in in April, and was inquired whether she preferred authorities to relocate the minors with someone protected. The agency also asserted that Rosario chose to be deported with her children.

Ruby, who was unable to complete her educational period in the US, is at risk of "educational decline" and is "facing substantial psychological challenges", according to the court documents.

Romeo, who has now reached five years, was could not obtain critical and essential medical treatment in Honduras. He temporarily visited the US, without his mother, to proceed with therapy.

"The child's declining condition and the interruption of his care have created for the mother significant distress and mental suffering," the court documents state.

*Names of individuals have been modified.