AN AUSTRALIAN woman and her 13-year-old son are set to be deported from the US on Friday after the child was charged with punching a classmate and taking 46 cents from him.

Tracey Washington and her son, who has not been identified, moved to San Francisco last year when she married an American, Charles Washington.

Tracey and Charles Washington with herfive-year old son and her husband Charles. Credit:AP

But now their family will be torn apart in a case that US immigrants' rights advocates say highlights the human consequences of San Francisco's deportation crackdown.

''I feel like they've taken my right to have a family,'' Mr Washington, a 42-year-old bus driver, told the San Francisco Chronicle. ''They used our son as bait, just to get the mother to come in.''