SEATTLE — Four children who are U.S. citizens have been detained with their mother for about two weeks after she was arrested by Border Patrol agents at Peace Arch Park near the U.S.-Canada border in June, U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., said Friday.

The Portland, Oregon-based mother and her young kids were taken into custody on June 28 after going to the park to meet family, Dexter said at a Friday press conference. The mother did not cross into Canadian territory, Dexter said.

Agents arrested the mother “attempting to smuggle illegal aliens into the U.S.,” CBP said in an emailed statement. She requested her children stay with her during detention, the statement said.

After learning of their detainment, Dexter and her team tracked the family down to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Ferndale, Whatcom County, where she said they have had no access to legal counsel. CBP said in its statement the woman “has been offered numerous opportunities to contact people.”

“Trump said he would go after the worst of the worst,” Dexter said Friday. “But what his immigration machine is doing instead is abducting Oregonians without cause, turning U.S. citizen children into collateral damage in a cruel, chaotic agenda.”

The agency’s most recently published standards say people should generally not be detained for longer than 72 hours in CBP holding facilities. In May, the Port of Seattle Commission sounded the alarm on CBP holding people in custody at the airport for long periods of time.

Dexter said she found out about the mother, who is from Honduras, and her children’s detainment Monday night after a friend of a friend texted her. They immediately got to work locating the family and drove to Washington, arriving in Bellingham on Thursday.

Jill Nedved, an immigration attorney for the family, said the mother has pending immigration documents not yet finalized with the government and is seeking an alternative visa. She has not been charged with a crime, the attorney added.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked up the woman’s husband, who was not with them at the park on June 28, a few days later in Portland, family friend Mimi Lettunich said at the Friday press conference. He is currently being held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, she said.

Lettunich said she found out the mother had been detained a few days after the arrest happened.

“I received a text from her that said, ‘Mimi, I’ve been detained,’ ” Lettunich said. “We started working on it immediately.”

The children’s grandmother, visiting from Honduras with an active travel visa, was also at the park during the arrest, Dexter said. She has since been detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, she added.

Dexter described the cell where the mother and children are staying as “humane, as much as a cell can be for a family of five.”

She has access to a refrigerator and can leave the cell, she said, adding that there are currently no other detainees at the facility.

Malou Chávez, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said children who are U.S. citizens getting stuck in the middle of immigration arrests isn’t common, but they’ve heard of a few cases.

“It should not be common, but we do know that it is happening,” she said. “We need to be alert and pay attention to this trend.”

Earlier this year, they learned of a family detained in Blaine, Whatcom County, that included at least one child who is a U.S. citizen, she said. Chávez also pointed to children who are U.S. citizens being deported with their parents.

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