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They discovered their location through a roadway marker that revealed their end point: Alexandria, Louisiana.

They were transported in the cargo area of an immigration enforcement vehicle – their possessions taken and travel documents held by agents. Rosario and her US citizen offspring, including a child who is fighting stage 4 kidney cancer, remained unaware about where immigration officials were transporting them.

The detention

The household had been taken into custody at an federal appointment near New Orleans on April 24. Following restrictions from contacting legal counsel, which they would later claim in official complaints violated their rights, the family was moved 200 miles to this rural town in central Louisiana.

"They never told me where I was going," Rosario stated, responding to questions about her situation for the premier instance after her family's case received coverage. "I was told that I must not seek information, I questioned our location, but they didn't respond."

The forced departure

Rosario, 25, and her two children were compulsorily transported to Honduras in the early morning hours the subsequent morning, from a rural airport in Alexandria that has emerged as a hub for extensive immigration enforcement. The location houses a specialized holding facility that has been referred to as a legal "void" by legal representatives with people held there, and it opens immediately onto an airport tarmac.

While the detention facility contains solely adult male detainees, leaked documents indicate at least 3,142 mothers and children have been processed at the Alexandria airport on immigration transports during the first 100 days of the present government. Certain people, like Rosario, are held in secret lodging before being removed from the country or transferred to other detention sites.

Lodging restrictions

The mother didn't remember which Alexandria hotel her family was brought to. "I just remember we accessed via a garage entrance, not the primary access," she stated.

"We felt like detainees in lodging," Rosario said, adding: "My kids would move closer to the door, and the female guards would get mad."

Medical concerns

The mother's child Romeo was diagnosed with metastatic kidney disease at the age of two, which had metastasized to his lungs, and was receiving "regular and critical life-saving cancer treatment" at a pediatric medical center in New Orleans before his apprehension. His sister, Ruby, also a citizen of the United States, was seven when she was detained with her family members.

Rosario "begged" guards at the hotel to allow her to use a telephone the night the family was there, she stated in legal filings. She was eventually permitted one limited communication to her father and told him she was in Alexandria.

The after-hours locating effort

The family was awakened at 2 a.m. the following morning, Rosario said, and transported immediately to the airport in a van with another family also confined in the hotel.

Without her knowledge, her lawyers and supporters had conducted overnight searches to locate where the two families had been held, in an bid for legal assistance. But they could not be found. The lawyers had made multiple applications to immigration authorities immediately after the detention to stop the transfer and establish her whereabouts. They had been consistently disregarded, according to court documents.

"The Alexandria staging facility is itself fundamentally opaque," said an expert, who is handling the case in current legal proceedings. "Yet with cases involving families, they will often not take them to the main center, but place them in undisclosed hotel rooms near the facility.

Legal arguments

At the heart of the legal action filed on behalf of Rosario and additional plaintiffs is the assertion that federal agencies have ignored established rules governing the treatment of US citizen children with parents facing removal. The guidelines state that authorities "should afford" parents "sufficient time" to make determinations concerning the "care or travel" of their young offspring.

Immigration officials have not yet addressed Rosario's allegations legally. The government agency did not answer detailed questions about the assertions.

The terminal ordeal

"When we arrived, it was a very empty airport," Rosario remembered. "Exclusively removal vans were coming in."

"There were multiple vans with additional families," she said.

They were confined to the transport at the airport for four and a half hours, seeing other vans approach with men chained at their hands and feet.

"That segment was upsetting," she said. "My children kept asking why everyone was chained 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 finally replied to Rosario's attorney – telling them a deportation delay had been rejected. Rosario said she had not consented at any point for her two US citizen children to be deported abroad.

Advocates said the scheduling of the apprehension may not have been accidental. They said the meeting – changed multiple times without explanation – may have been arranged to match with a transport plane to Honduras the next day.

"Authorities appear to funnel as many detainees as they can toward that facility so they can populate the aircraft and deport them," explained a legal advocate.

The ongoing impact

The entire experience has caused lasting consequences, according to the lawsuit. Rosario still experiences anxiety regarding threats and abduction in Honduras.

In a previously released statement, the Department of Homeland Security stated that Rosario "decided" to bring her children to the federal appointment in April, and was questioned about authorities to place the children with someone safe. The organization also stated 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 "learning setbacks" and is "experiencing significant psychological challenges", according to the court documents.

Romeo, who has now become five years old, was could not obtain critical and essential medical care 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 psychological pain," the legal action alleges.

*Names of people involved have been modified.