Two-year-old US girl deported to Honduras: judge
A two-year-old American girl has been deported with her undocumented mother to Honduras, a federal judge in Louisiana has said, but United States President Donald Trump’s administration contends that the woman asked for her child to be sent with her.
The case is the latest to pit the US judiciary against Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, as the administration pursues mass expulsions of undocumented migrants from American soil.
Federal District Judge Terry Doughty has set a May 16 hearing in the case “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process”, according to a court order dated Friday.
“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,” wrote Doughty, recalling that it is illegal to deport a US citizen.
The girl has only been identified by the initials VML.
Attorneys for her father filed an emergency request for a temporary restraining order aimed at obtaining the girl’s return.
The Trump administration has butted heads with federal judges, rights groups and Democrats who say he has trampled or ignored constitutional rights in rushing to deport migrants, sometimes without the right to a hearing.
On Friday, federal agents arrested a US judge in Wisconsin for allegedly shielding an undocumented migrant.
The White House has defied the Supreme Court’s ruling that the administration must “facilitate” the return of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.