A judge said a 2-year-old girl with U.S. citizenship appears to have been deported along with her mother to Honduras with "no meaningful process" — despite her father's efforts to keep her in the country.
According to Politico, "U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said the child — identified in court papers by the initials 'V.M.L.' — appeared to have been released in Honduras earlier Friday, along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, who had been detained by immigration officials earlier in the week."
The judge said a hearing will take place on May 19 “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
V.M.L., who is identified as having been born in New Orleans, "had been with her mother and sister during a regular immigration check-in at the New Orleans office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday. Officials there detained them and queued them up for deportation. Trump administration officials said in court that the mother told ICE officials that she wished to take V.M.L. with her to Honduras."
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Doughty said he would like to verify this information, including the authenticity of a handwritten Spanish note Trump officials provided from the mother purporting to confirm her wishes: “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.”
Despite the Trump administration's claims, lawyers representing V.M.L.'s family told a court the detention was unlawful on Thursday. Her father allegedly had been trying to get in touch with her mother to work out arrangements for her, "but ICE officials denied him the chance to have a substantive phone call. He says ICE allowed the two to speak for about one minute on Tuesday, while the mother was in ICE custody, but that they were unable to make any meaningful decisions about their child."
The Trump administration has faced rising anger over the apparent lack of due process in large-scale deportations, with many of people the administration claims to be gang members being summarily shipped to the infamous CECOT megaprison in El Salvador — including a Maryland father, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose cause has sparked national outcry.