A Trump appointed judge is raising alarm over what appears to be the deportation of an US-born child to a foreign country with “no meaningful process.”
The child identified in court papers by the initials “V.M.L.” was deported to Honduras Friday, along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, even though the child’s father tried to keep her in the U.S.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, scheduled a hearing on May 16 that will be “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
According to Politico, the child, whose redacted U.S. birth certificate was filed in court and showed she was born in New Orleans in 2023, had been with her mother and sister during a regular immigration check-in at the New Orleans ICE office on Tuesday when they were detained.
Trump administration officials said in court that the mother gave ICE officials a handwritten note in Spanish saying she wanted to take V.M.L with her to Honduras.
“The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty wrote. “But the Court doesn’t know that.”
V.M.L’s father asked a woman named Trish Mack to act as her legal custodian in order to get the toddler released from ICE custody.
However, Mack’s attorneys said that ICE agents only allowed the girl’s mother one minute to discuss arrangements with V.M.L.’s father on Tuesday and they were unable to make any substantive plan during that short time period.
