The Trump administration deported a 2-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras alongside her mother and sister on Friday. A federal judge said he suspects the move was carried out “with no meaningful process.”
The girl’s father, also an American citizen, desperately tried to keep her in the United States by petitioning the courts. The government claims the mother wished to take her daughter with her to Honduras, citing a handwritten note allegedly confirming the woman’s intent.
U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty raised skepticism about the note and process by which the girl was deported on Friday.
“The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty, a President Donald Trump-appointed judge, wrote. “But the court doesn’t know that.”
“It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen,” Doughty said, before setting up a May 19 hearing “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
The toddler, who was referred to as “V.M.L.” in court documents, was deported with her illegal immigrant mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, and elder sister — both of whom had been detained by immigration officials during a routine check-in last week in New Orleans.
Immigrants with cases in process, pending appeals, or parole, have routinely been required to check in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. They are typically sent on their way if they have not violated any regulations or committed any crimes. However, these once-routine meetings have become increasingly fraught with confusion as the Trump administration has cracked down on illegal immigration.
V.M.L. was apprehended by ICE officers on Tuesday.
Doughty issued a brief order from Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana. In it, he questioned why the Trump administration would deport her even though her father, a U.S. citizen, had sought in an emergency petition to keep her stateside.
Doughty said he tried to investigate what happened himself by trying to get Villela on the phone to discuss her “consent and custodial rights,” but it was too late as she and her daughters were already “above the Gulf of America” by then.
He said a lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department told him at 1:06 p.m. that Lopez and her daughters had been “released in Honduras.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and several other organizations weighed in on the case, calling it “troubling.”
PROTESTS TARGET COURTHOUSE, FBI AFTER JUDGE ARRESTED FOR ALLEGEDLY PROTECTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT
The ACLU said that the 2-year-old and two other U.S. citizen children in a separate case were deported from the U.S. “under deeply troubling circumstances that raise serious due process concerns.”
The Washington Examiner‘s calls to ICE for comment were not returned.
