US judge says 2-year-old citizen was deported to Honduras 'without meaningful process'

A federal judge in Louisiana has said that a 2-year-old US citizen has been deported to Honduras with her mother without any “meaningful due process”. US District Judge Terry Doughty noted that the child and her mother were removed from the country on Friday and ordered a hearing on the case for next month.

“The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the Court doesn’t know that,” Doughty wrote.

According to the judge, the Louisiana court contacted a government attorney at 12:19 p.m. local time to reach the child’s mother while the flight was already en route. When the court followed up at 1:06 p.m., they were informed that both the mother and child had already arrived in Honduras.

She added that the court has set a date of May 16 to hear the case, “In the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process.”

Lawyers challenging the deportation say that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained the mother and her two daughters—one of whom, identified in court documents as VML, is a US citizen—on Tuesday morning in New Orleans as the woman arrived for a scheduled meeting with the agency.

VML’s father, who lives in the US, sought custody of her after her mother was detained earlier this week, in addition to requesting that the girl be placed with a custodian who is “ready and willing” to care for her.

Attorneys from the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild stated that VML, a US citizen, was born in Baton Rouge on January 4, 2023, while her 11-year-old sibling was born in Honduras. Legal representatives opposing VML’s deportation argued that expelling her from the country would violate her constitutional rights as an American citizen.