The mother and children arrested by the immigration authorities about two weeks ago in the small village of New York, where the border tsar of President Donald Trump, Tom Homan, was published on Monday.
Jennifer Gaffney, Superintendent of the Central School District of Sackets Harbor, where children are students, had led efforts to ensure family release since they were arrested on March 27 and sent to the Karnes County Detention Center in Texas.
“After eleven days of uncertainty, our students and their mother return home,” Gaffney said in a statement on Monday. “We remain committed to providing the necessary attention, understanding and sensitivity for all students and staff as we begin the process of healing this traumatic experience.”
A senior official of the National Security Department confirmed to NBC News that the family will return home.
New York governor Kathy Hochul, said in a statement on Monday afternoon that she spoke with Homan, who confirmed that the family is “currently on their way back” to Harbor Sackets in Jefferson County.
“I can’t imagine the trauma that these children and their mother feel, and I pray so they can heal when they return home,” said Hochul.
Corey Decillis, president of the Democratic Committee of Jefferson County, who organized a demonstration on Saturday demanding the liberation of the family, told NBC News that he was “euphoric.”
According to the senior DHS official, agents with national security investigations and the border patrol were executing a criminal search warrant in Old McDonald’s Farm in Harbor Sackets on March 27 in relation to an ongoing federal investigation on the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse materials.
The DHS official said the authorities arrested seven undocumented people, including the mother and her three children, while they were on the farm. The official did not specify how the authorities found the arrests.
“National Security investigations immediately carried out an investigation to ensure that these children were not sexually exploited,” added the official.
The defenders of the rights of immigrants, school officials and Hochul retreated, questioning why arrest them and “disappear” from their community ensured the safety of children.
Murad Awawdeh, president and executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in an interview with NBC News on Monday that what happened with the Harbor Sackets family was “a very exhausting and horrible experience.”
In an open letter last week, Jaime Cook, director of Harbor Central School, said the family “lived in a house on the same path that a local ice had a court order. The fact that the ice went from door to door is unfathomable.”
“The fact that our students were handcuffed and placed in the same truck as the alleged street criminal is excessive,” said Cook’s letter.
Hochul said Tuesday that “he cannot think of any justification for public security so that ice agents start an innocent family, including a third -grade child, from his home in Sackets Harbor.”
Cook said the children are in the third, tenth and 11th grade and had been at school for three years.
The mother and her three children were taken when the immigration authorities were looking in the former McDonald’s farm to a South African immigrant, who since then has been accused of child pornography distribution.
The arrest of the South African immigrant was part of an “improved operational operation” of the application of immigration and customs in the west, the center and northern New York from March 24 to 28.
Homan had defended the family’s operation and arrest in an interview with Wwny-TV in Watertown last week.
“ICE is doing everything for the book. Once the investigation reaches the point where we have no interest in this family, a decision in liberation will be made,” said Homan.
Cook said the family had been part of the Harbor Sackets community, working on the farm for 15 years. She said that since she appears to her judicial hearings to declare immigration judges, the mother and children had also been “doing everything right” to find a way to legally remain in the United States.
Awawdeh said that the family can effectively resume these efforts.
While the community expects the return of the family, Awawdeh said they are “a testimony of how community support can really make a difference to help ensure the liberation of its neighbor.”
