A federal judge in Louisiana on Friday questioned the deportation of a two-year-old American girl and her mother to Honduras, stating that the removal happened "without due process," according to court documents.
In his order, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty from the Western District of Louisiana condemned the fact that the girl (identified in all documents as V.M.L.) had been deported despite her father's request that she remain in the United States under the supervision of a temporary custodian, the court filing reads.
Declaring the deportation "illegal and unconstitutional," Doughty — a judge nominated by President Donald Trump — scheduled a hearing for May 16 to examine the process federal agents followed in deporting the child.
ICE agents arrested Jenny Carolina López Villela and her daughters, V.M.L. (2 years old) and Valeria (11 years old), on April 22 at 8:30 a.m. while the mother was attending a routine check-in with her supervisor, according to the petition filed by Trish Mack, the family’s temporary custodian.
The father had taken them to the appointment. About an hour after they entered the building, he received a call from someone in the supervisor’s office informing him that his family had been transferred to ICE’s field office in New Orleans. "ICE officers told him they could not provide further information, but that the mother of V.M.L. would call him soon," the document states.
Around 7:30 p.m. the same day, the father received a call from an ICE agent allowing him to briefly speak with his wife, who informed him that all three were being deported. During the conversation, he reminded his wife that V.M.L. was a U.S. citizen and could not be deported. He testified that the conversation lasted less than a minute and that he could hear the girls crying in the background.
The ICE agent, who was listening to the conversation, told them that V.M.L. could not be deported, but that the mother and the 11-year-old had deportation orders. As the father tried to give his wife a lawyer’s phone number, the call was disconnected.
V.M.L.’s birth certificate, filed with the court, shows she was born in 2023 in New Orleans.
The next day, when the father's attorney called the ICE field officer, she reportedly began questioning the attorney about the father's immigration status and address. The attorney refused to provide that information. The officer then declined to release the two-year-old to the family’s authorized custodian, stating it was unnecessary because V.M.L. was with her mother.
“She said that the father could attempt to pick her up, but that he could also be detained just like them (...) She indicated that she was detaining V.M.L. — a two-year-old American citizen — to induce the father to turn himself over to immigration authorities,” the court document states.
In his April 25 order, Judge Terry Doughty stated that he attempted to contact the mother by phone to verify whether she had, in fact, consented for her daughter to be deported with her, as the government claimed with a note allegedly written by the mother. But officials responded that the call was impossible because the family had already been released in Honduras.
The case highlights the extent of President Donald Trump's aggressive mass deportation policies, whose officials have repeatedly stated that American-born children of undocumented parents would also be deported alongside them.
In making these claims, officials place the responsibility on parents for lacking legal status while having children in the United States. However, U.S. citizens cannot be deported.
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