An Arizona mother who murdered her two kids, ages 7 and 9, using a meat cleaver “designed to cut the bones of animals” will die behind bars after being handed two consecutive life sentences on Friday for her heinous crimes.

Yui Inoue, 44, was sentenced by Maricopa County Superior Judge Jeffrey Rueter, according to AZFamily, and he didn’t mince words when speaking to her.

“Words can’t adequately describe what occurred,” Rueter said, per AZFamily.

“I can’t imagine what those children went through in their last minutes,” he told the court. “The fear, the pain, the suffering. It’s incomprehensible.”

Inoue, who spoke through a Japanese interpreter, said that she believed her children were not dead. She was given the two life sentences plus two 20-year sentences to be served consecutively.

“They are spending time with my parents,” Inoue reportedly said. “I love my children very much so it’s very strange. My children are with my parents.”

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Inoue, who lived in Tempe, was accused of killing her two kids in a heinous 2021 murder case that wrapped up in February with her conviction.

“Mia and Kai Inoue were sleeping soundly in their beds when their own mother came into their bedroom holding a knife, a meat cleaver … and she attacked them with it,” prosecutors said during closing arguments, according to AZFamily. “She had to think. She had to act. And there’s nothing unclear or speculative about any of that.”

A Maricopa County jury found Inoue guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of child abuse in connection to a prior investigation by the Arizona Department of Child Safety and the May 2021 murders of her children Mia and Kai Inoue, who were identified by local officials.

Prosecutors say Inoue set upon her two children after claiming to hear “voices telling her to kill” them. She called 911 afterward and then went to flag down officers at a police substation on East Apache Boulevard near Arizona State University. The distraught mother was primarily speaking Japanese, police said, and she reportedly confessed to the officers on the spot about the slayings. Authorities went up to her apartment in response and found the mutilated bodies of Inoue’s kids.

“[S]he was hearing voices telling her to kill her children,” charging documents said.

Inoue later told police that she woke up with blood on her hands around 4:30 a.m. to find her children dead and also covered in blood near a doorway. After that, she said she took a bath and finally “woke up” to the reality of the violence she committed. Her lawyers claim Inoue had no memory of carrying out the killings. According to local ABC affiliate KNXV, Tempe police said a blood-soaked meat cleaver was discovered inside the vehicle Inoue drove to the police substation.

“We are here because this woman tried to decapitate two souls,” said Maricopa County prosecutor Shaylee Beasley during her closing arguments in February, according to the Arizona Republic.

Beasley described in detail how Inoue “delivered chop after chop” to the children while they both “tried to protect their heads.” She reportedly showed close-up photos of the children’s horrific injuries to the jury and claimed their deaths were connected to a bitter divorce she was having with their father.

Inoue’s attorney, Rebecca Felmly, had previously said that she believed there was enough reasonable doubt presented at Inoue’s trial for the jury to deliver a verdict of not guilty. During her first court appearance in 2021, Inoue told the judge “I did not kill anybody” through her interpreter.

“(The medical examiner) likened the amount of force to a guillotine,” Felmly said, according to AZFamily. “She is a very tiny, very slightly-built woman. She doesn’t have the energy, the power, or the strength to cause that type of injury to those kids.”

The child abuse case that Inoue was convicted of stemmed from a report made by Inoue’s husband in March 2021 — just months before the killings — saying Inoue “took Kai” and their whereabouts were unknown. “Police eventually located Ms. Inoue and Kai behind a convenience store,” DCS officials said in a May 2021 statement. “Ms. Inoue was taken to a psychiatric hospital and Kai was returned to his father.”

DCS investigators said they did not observe any “visible signs of abuse or neglect on the children” and the kids claimed “they felt safe with their parents.” The investigation did not find any evidence to warrant removal from the home, according to DCS officials.

Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.

Lawyers for the families of two children with U.S. citizenship, including a 4-year-old who has Stage 4 cancer, have accused the Trump administration of deporting the youths to Honduras on the same day another child with citizenship was allegedly sent to the Central American country, which led to an order from a federal judge requiring the government to explain itself.

President Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, went on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday and insisted that “no U.S. citizen child” had been deported. He claimed that “deported means ordered by an immigration judge” and suggested that the mothers may have chosen to take the children with them, saying: “That’s a parent’s decision. It’s not a government decision, it’s a parent’s decision.”

Reports emerged late Saturday and Sunday from The Washington Post and New York Times saying the 4-year-old and a 7-year-old had also been shipped out Friday with the child that led to the judge’s memorandum in federal court.

As Law&Crime previously reported, a federal judge in Louisiana known for his rulings that tend to align with causes championed by Trump issued a memorandum order Friday setting a hearing to address the apparent deportation of a 2-year-old identified only as V.M.L. According to a petition for a writ of habeas corpus — a request that court determine whether a person’s detention is unlawful — V.M.L. was born in 2023 in Baton Rouge, as indicated on her birth certificate.

Lawyers for the mother of the 2-year-old told the Times that she and the other two kids were all deported to Honduras Friday. The Times reports that the mother of the 2-year-old is pregnant, while the 4-year-old from the other family has a rare form of late-stage cancer. The boy allegedly had no access to his medications or his doctors during the removal process, the lawyers say.

Gracie Willis, a lawyer with the National Immigration Project who is reportedly involved in the case involving the 2-year-old, has condemned the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and local law officials as being both “horrifying and baffling” as the children are all considered “U.S. citizen” children.

Homan, however, says the government sees things differently.

“Having a U.S. citizen child after you enter this country illegally is not a get-out-of-jail free card,” he told “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

“It doesn’t make you immune from our laws,” Homan said. “If that’s the message we sent the entire world, women are gonna keep putting themselves at risk and come to this country. We send a message. You can enter [the] country illegally, which is a crime. That’s okay. You can have due process, great taxpayer expense. Get ordered removed. That’s okay. Don’t leave. But have a U.S. citizen child and you’re immune from removal? That’s not the way it works.”

Speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that if the children’s families want them to come back to the U.S. that they will be allowed to “if there’s their father or someone here who wants to assume them” in the United States.

“Ultimately, who was deported … was their mothers, who were here illegally,” Rubio said. “The children just went with their mothers. But it wasn’t like — you guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the 2-year-old and threw him on an airplane. That’s misleading.”

A representative “next friend” of the 2-year-old, who says she has known her since birth, has filed a motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to block the child’s removal, accusing ICE of engaging in “attempts to disappear” V.M.L. and lying to the child’s family and representatives in the process.

At the time the TRO motion was filed, the girl’s representatives believed she was still in the U.S.

In its opposition to the TRO request, ICE said the girl’s mother wanted to take V.M.L. with her back to Honduras, and provided as proof a note written by hand in Spanish. Just like Homan and Rubio, the government also signaled skepticism that the child’s “next friend,” as well as V.M.L.’s father, were indeed who they said they were, saying they have not provided identification to ICE in support of releasing the child into their custody.

In Friday’s order, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty — appointed by Trump in 2018 — said that V.M.L. is “ostensibly” a 2-year-old United States citizen.

“Of course, ‘It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen,”” Doughty concluded.

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Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report. 

A Florida mom is accused of neglecting her kids after neighbors allegedly found two unclothed toddlers wandering alone on the sidewalk near her home.

Heidy Teressa Diaz-Torres, 25, is facing a charge of felony child neglect with no great bodily harm, according to Miami-Dade County court records. The children, ages 1 and 3 years old, were found on Tuesday by two women who spotted them in the 700 block of West 37th Street in Hialeah, a city just northwest of Miami. Local local ABC affiliate WPLG, citing a police report, said that the women told officials that one of children was able to tell them where they lived, and the women walked them to their home.

A family with children was enjoying a meal at a Fremont, California, McDonald’s when a 22-year-old man allegedly slapped the mother and made a racist remark.

Prosecutors on Wednesday charged Marcus Harper with a hate crime and battery over the alleged incident. According to the Fremont Police Department, Harper, around 2:15 p.m. on April 5, walked up to a mother, father and two children as they ate in McDonald’s.

More from Law&Crime: Florida man takes 8-inch chef’s knife out of package to repeatedly stab woman criticizing his ‘uncontrolled kids’ while in line at supermarket butcher’s counter

“Harper initially took food from their table and ate it in front of them ,” cops wrote in the press release. “Harper walked away from the table for a brief time before returning to the table to slap the adult victim on her face while standing behind her.”

Prosecutors allege Harper then stated: “You Indians need to go back to your country.”

The defendant then threw a sauce packet at one of the children, a 9-year-old girl, before leaving. Cops obtained an arrest warrant and located him sitting alone in his vehicle in the area of Marshlands Road and Thornton Avenue on Tuesday. They took him into custody without further incident.

Local CW affiliate KRON obtained a police report that said Harper did not deny his actions. He reportedly said that the father gave him a “weird feeling” and felt as if he wanted him to slap her. Harper claimed he blacked out at the time of the alleged assault.

A Florida minister allegedly killed a mother and seriously injured three of her children — ages 4, 6 and 15 — in a wrong-way car crash just six hours after he was released from jail for a DUI arrest, cops say.

Nicholas Betancourt, 33, is facing nearly a dozen charges, including DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide, for the Feb. 27 crash in Odessa that took the life of Dana Maria Rivera, 36, and left three of her children hospitalized, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. The mother-of-four was driving southbound on Gunn Highway near Dolce Vita Lane when Betancourt, who was driving a Chrysler Pacifica minivan, allegedly drifted over from the northbound lane and slammed into her Lincoln Town car.

Police say Betancourt, who was arrested on Thursday, was “on the nod” after the crash occurred, according to a motion filed by prosecutors for pretrial detention, with deputies who responded saying he appeared intoxicated.

“Deputy Garcia made contact with Defendant on scene and observed the defendant to be ‘on the nod’ with his head falling down and his eyes droopy,” the motion said. “Dash camera footage recovered shows the Pacifica operated by Defendant leaving its lane of travel and entering into the lane of travel for the Town Car at the time of the crash.”

One of the seven people accused of torturing and killing a missing man in New York for months — simply because “they enjoyed it,” according to prosecutors — is also facing coercion charges for allegedly forcing two children, ages 7 and 12, to take part in hurting and treating the victim “like a dog,” officials say.

“To have two children have to participate in the beating of another human being, it’s deeply disturbing,” Ontario County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Wolford said at a press conference Wednesday. “It has, I can speak for myself and everyone involved in this investigation, been one of the most troubling parts of this. It’s heartbreaking.”

According to prosecutors and police, Minnesota resident Sam Nordquist was lured by his online girlfriend Precious Arzuaga to the Empire State in September and taken captive at a hotel in Ontario County by Arzuaga and six others in December. The group physically and sexually assaulted Nordquist; prevented him from eating food and hyrdrating; forced him to eat feces and drink urine; and other grotesque forms of torture, according to prosecutors.

“They forced him to obey their commands, treating him like a dog,” Wolford said Wednesday. “We have a seven-year-old and a 12-year-old who are also victims. They may have been forced to participate, but their lives are forever changed by what they saw and endured there.”

An Alabama couple lost custody of their two children for over nine months after they were accused of driving while intoxicated — but there was no evidence that the one behind the wheel was ever intoxicated.

In a lawsuit filed on Feb. 25, Nicholas and Elizabeth Frye stated that they took a vacation with their two small children in Tennessee in February 2024. While at the resort where they were staying, Elizabeth Frye slipped and sustained a minor injury, and Nicholas Frye took the family to a nearby Walmart store for medical supplies. Upon completing their Walmart run and driving back, Nicholas Frye was pulled over by an officer “without reasonable suspicion or probable cause” and accused of DUI. Elizabeth Frye was also arrested, and both were charged with “DUI, public intoxication, child abuse and neglect, and aggravated child abuse and neglect.”

But there was no immediate evidence that either parent was under the influence — and Nicholas Frye’s blood tests later showed an “absence of drugs and alcohol at the time of the arrest.”

A Wisconsin woman who allegedly assaulted her boyfriend before fleeing the scene with her two young children was charged with child abuse after making the kids spend a long night outside in the freezing cold.

Angelica Saragosa, 47, appeared in court on Feb. 21, a day after she was arrested by the Thiensville Police Department.

She was ordered to be held on $100,000 bond after prosecutors told Circuit Judge Sandy Williams that Saragosa allegedly “spent the night outside with her two children, who were poorly dressed” in reported wind chill temperatures of -19 degrees Fahrenheit. The children were hospitalized for low body temperature and other “life-threatening” conditions related to exposure to the bitter cold, authorities said.

A mother in Hawaii is behind bars, along with her girlfriend, for allegedly starving and beating her 3-year-old daughter to death using belts, paddles, sticks and slippers to pound on the toddler — while also limiting her water intake to 8 ounces a day — along with her three of her siblings, ages 2 through 6, who managed to survive the “disturbing” abuse, according to police.

“First responders found Sarai malnourished and pulseless, with ashen skin and bruises to her legs, hips, arms, face, back and head,” explained Honolulu Police Department Lt. Deena Thoemmes at a press conference last Thursday after announcing the arrests of Janae Perez and Ashley Utley for the death of Perez’s daughter, Sarai Perez-Rivera, in June 2024, according to Hawaii News Now.

“Through the investigation, it was learned that Janae and Ashley limited Sarai and her siblings intake of water and food,” Thoemmes said. “Janae and Ashley did not allow them to eat often and only allowed them to drink 8 ounces of water a day.”

A twisted TikTok prank, in which a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old from Texas followed elementary school students home from school and asked if they “wanted to be kidnapped,” has landed the two teens behind bars on charges of making terroristic threats, police say.

Kaine Villareal and Lane Burch, both of Kyle, were caught Wednesday following a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old as they walked home from Negley Elementary School that afternoon at around 3:20 p.m., according to the Kyle Police Department.

The pair approached the two kids and asked if they “wanted to be kidnapped” as part of a “prank” for social media, according to police.