AUSTIN — The deportation of a 5-year-old Texas boy and his father has sparked a public dispute between U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico over whether federal immigration officials gave the father a meaningful choice to keep his son with him.
Immigration officials detained Liam Tadeo and his father, Victor Martinez Nieto, on Aug. 16 while they traveled to a soccer game in Austin. Authorities later took them to the Dilley immigration detention facility south of San Antonio before deporting them together to Mexico on Tuesday.
Talarico drew attention to the case Wednesday, saying Liam spent the first day of school in an immigration detention center.
“ICE kidnapped Liam Tadeo on his way to a soccer game with his dad. Liam should be in kindergarten,” Talarico wrote on X.
Talarico said Thursday that authorities had deported Liam and his father.
Mullin responded Thursday and said Talarico had omitted key details. According to Mullin, Martinez Nieto requested voluntary departure after his arrest and asked that Liam leave the country with him.
Mullin said immigration officials give detained parents the option of leaving with their children or designating another person to care for them.
“ICE does NOT separate families,” Mullin wrote.
The family’s attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, gave a different account of the circumstances surrounding the father’s decision to leave with Liam.
She told KUT that Martinez Nieto chose voluntary departure because he feared authorities could separate him from his son and place Liam in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement as an unaccompanied child.
Lincoln-Goldfinch later told CBS Austin that authorities gave Martinez Nieto the choice of leaving without Liam or taking his son with him. She also alleged that officials would not release Liam to his mother.
The conflicting accounts have fueled the dispute between Talarico and the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS said Martinez Nieto entered the United States near Laredo in March 2022. ICE arrested him in November 2025, and he previously accepted voluntary departure before authorities removed him in February, according to CBS Austin. DHS said he later reentered the United States without authorization.
“NOBODY is above the law,” Mullin said, arguing that parents who violate immigration laws remain responsible for the consequences of their actions.
Talarico’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Mullin’s statements.
