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

Their journey continued in the rear compartment of an immigration enforcement vehicle – their items confiscated and passports held by agents. The mother and her US citizen offspring, including a child who battles metastatic kidney disease, remained unaware about where federal agents were directing them.

The detention

The family members had been detained at an required meeting near New Orleans on April 24. After being prevented from contacting legal counsel, which they would subsequently allege in court filings violated their rights, the family was transported 200 miles to this modest settlement in the state's interior.

"Our location remained undisclosed," she recounted, answering inquiries about her situation for the initial occasion after her family's case became public. "Authorities directed that I shouldn't inquire, I questioned our location, but they offered no answer."

The forced departure

Rosario, 25, and her young offspring were compulsorily transported to Honduras in the middle of the night the next day, from a regional airfield in Alexandria that has become a center for extensive immigration enforcement. The location houses a distinctive confinement area that has been called a legal "void" by lawyers with clients inside, and it connects directly onto an runway area.

While the confinement area accommodates only male adults, leaked documents indicate at least 3,142 mothers and children have passed through the Alexandria airport on government charter flights during the first 100 days of the current administration. Some individuals, like Rosario, are detained at undisclosed hotels before being sent abroad or moved to other detention sites.

Lodging restrictions

The mother didn't remember which Alexandria hotel her family was directed toward. "My recollection is we entered through a vehicle access point, not the front door," she remembered.

"We were treated like detainees in lodging," Rosario said, adding: "My kids would attempt to approach the door, and the female guards would get mad."

Health issues

The mother's young boy Romeo was diagnosed with advanced renal carcinoma at the age of two, which had spread to his lungs, and was receiving "ongoing and essential cancer care" at a specialized children's hospital in New Orleans before his apprehension. His sister, Ruby, also a American national, was seven when she was apprehended with her family members.

Rosario "pleaded with" guards at the hotel to permit utilization of a telephone the night the family was there, she stated in official complaints. She was finally allowed one brief phone call to her father and told him she was in Alexandria.

The nighttime investigation

The family was awakened at 2 a.m. the subsequent day, Rosario said, and brought straight to the airport in a van with another family also detained at the hotel.

Unknown to Rosario, her attorneys and supporters had searched throughout the night to locate where the two families had been held, in an attempt to obtain legal intervention. But they could not be found. The attorneys had made numerous petitions to immigration authorities following the arrest to stop the transfer and find her position. They had been regularly overlooked, according to legal filings.

"The Louisiana location is itself essentially a void," said an immigration advocate, who is providing legal counsel in ongoing litigation. "But in situations involving families, they will often not take them to the main center, but put them in secret lodging near the facility.

Judicial contentions

At the core of the litigation filed on behalf of Rosario and other individuals is the claim that federal agencies have breached internal policies governing the care for US citizen children with parents facing removal. The guidelines state that authorities "must provide" parents "sufficient time" to make determinations concerning the "care or travel" of their minor children.

Immigration officials have not yet answered Rosario's claims in court. The Department of Homeland Security did not address detailed questions about the assertions.

The airport experience

"Once we got there, it was a mostly deserted facility," Rosario remembered. "Just immigration transports were arriving."

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

They were confined to the transport at the airport for an extended period, seeing other vehicles arrive with men shackled at their limbs.

"That portion was traumatic," she said. "My children kept asking why everyone was shackled hand and foot ... if they were wrongdoers. I explained it was just part of the process."

The plane journey

The family was then compelled to board an aircraft, court filings state. At approximately this time, according to documents, an immigration local official eventually responded to Rosario's attorney – telling them a removal halt had been refused. Rosario said she had not consented at any point for her two American-born offspring to be removed to Honduras.

Legal representatives said the date of the detention may not have been coincidental. They said the appointment – changed multiple times without explanation – 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 facility so they can populate the aircraft and deport them," commented a legal advocate.

The aftermath

The complete ordeal has caused permanent damage, according to the legal action. Rosario still experiences anxiety regarding threats and kidnapping in Honduras.

In a earlier communication, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Rosario "decided" to bring her children to the required meeting in April, and was inquired whether she preferred authorities to place the children with someone protected. The organization also asserted that Rosario chose to be deported with her children.

Ruby, who was couldn't finish her educational period in the US, is at risk of "academic regression" and is "experiencing significant mental health issues", according to the litigation.

Romeo, who has now turned five, was could not obtain critical and essential medical treatment in Honduras. He briefly returned to the US, without his mother, to continue treatment.

"The child's declining condition and the halt in his therapy have caused Rosario tremendous anxiety and emotional turmoil," the legal action alleges.

*Names of people involved have been altered.