UPDATE: I seem to have used a certain term in this post, a term that I have always understood as referring to immigration status, but which i am now informed is racially/ethnically insensitive. I apologize. I won't change the word on my site, though, because I do not go back and hide my mistakes or bury evidence of my own errors.

Mom and Dad are here illegally – they need to be deported. None of the extraneous details about the kids are relevant.

It was about 6:30 in the evening and the woman had dinner on the stove.

Her husband came though the door after a dusty day of work with Cornejo & Sons Construction. He was cheery as always, she said. But the U.S. Marshals that came to the porch of their Wichita home minutes later changed that.

The marshals arrested Jaime Villagrana following his indictment on four counts of using a fake Social Security number to land his job. He is in the U.S. illegally and after being deported once before, had returned.

For some Americans and a majority of Kansans, the question of how the U.S. should deal with illegal immigration is cut and dried: Find those who shouldn't be here and deport them.

But the reality of deportation is complicated, those who deport illegal immigrants for a living say.

Villagrana and his wife, Manuela, for example, have two young children who were born in Wichita and are by law American citizens.

Villagrana's take-home pay -- after taxes and Social Security deductions -- supported his family, but his 7-month-old son, Guillermo, has an undiagnosed illness that requires a respirator and 20-hour-a-day professional attention He has received thousands of dollars in Medicaid services for his care.

If Villagrana is prison, and Manuela is forced to leave, what will happen to the children?

In the debate over whether the U.S. should more aggressively deport those who are here illegally, cases like the Villagranas show that easy answers are hard to find.

There are three options available here – let the parents decide.

The first one is for the parents to take the children with them. The kids can return when they are adults, and start the process of bringing the parents over after the turn 18. That is the legal method of immigration.

The second is for them to find a nice American family to raise the children for them – or a family member who is here legally (notice that the status of the husband’s brother is pointedly not addressed). The kids can then sponsor the parents back when the turn 18. Again, that is the proper legal process for getting the parents into the country.

The third option is terminating the parental rights of the parents, for it sounds like it is not in the best interests of the children to be sent to Mexico. We might even consider writing such a provision into American law, automatically severing the parental rights of any illegal whose child is born an American citizen. These children would be legally free for adoption by American families, and would be raised in America as American citizens. And the beauty of this approach is that the illegal immigrant birth-parents would have no claim to being family members. This would certainly eliminate the incentive to have anchor babies, for they could then never sponsor the deported parents into the US – and it certainly is easier than amending the Constitution to deny citizenship to the children of illegals.

Do I sound heartless, given the health problems of little Guillermo? Probably – but my personal choice would be option number two or three, which would ensure that this child has all the benefits that come with American citizenship.

But I have not one ounce of sympathy for the parents – they have broken our laws and invaded our country. They need to be removed immediately.

To paraphrase a slogan popular among supporters of illegal immigration, “Para los ciudadanos, todo. Para los mojados, nada.”

For the citizens, everything. For the wetbacks, nothing.

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