Marco Rubio Stands By Removal Of U.S. Citizen Children: 'The Children Went With Their Mother'

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is standing by the removal of two U.S. citizen children, saying that their mother made the decision to take them along when being deported rather than leaving them in the country.

"The children went with their mother. Those children are U.S. citizens. They can come back into the United States if there's their father or someone here who wants to assume them," he said in an interview with Meet The Press.

The children in question taken to Honduras with their mother, with press reporting that they didn't get the chance to speak with attorneys. One of them has Stage 4 cancer and is unable to access medication, the National Immigration Project (NIP) said.

Gracie Willis, an attorney with the NIP, said the children, who are 7 and 4 years-old respectively, were detained in El Paso and flown to the Central American country last Friday. The NIP was preparing a habeas corpus but the children were deported before the organization was able to do so.

"The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable, and every official responsible for it should be held accountable," said attorney Erin Hebert, who is representing the family.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty has ordered a hearing regarding the case, saying it looked like the government deported the children with "no meaningful due process."

Rubio, however, stood by the decision, saying: "If someone is in this country unlawfully, illegally, that person gets deported. If that person is with a 2-year-old child or has a 2-year-old child and says, I want to take my child with me, well, then what? You have two choices."

"You can say yes, of course you can take your child, whether they're a citizen or not, because it's your child; or you can say yes, you can go, but your child must stay behind. And then your headlines would read: 'U.S. holding hostage 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 7-year-old, while mother deported," Rubio added.

Border czar Tom Homan used the same argument, saying it was "on" the mother if she was in the country unlawfully and decided to take the children with her. "That's not on this administration," he said.

Told about judge Doughty's assessment about the absence of due process, Homan said he disagreed and that the woman "had due process at great taxpayer expense."