A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with no meaningful process, even as the childs father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country.
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 on Friday scheduled a hearing for May 16, which he said was in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.
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 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. The filing included a handwritten note in Spanish they claimed was written by the mother and confirmed her intent. But the judge said he had hoped to verify that information.
The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her, Doughty wrote. But the Court doesnt know that.
The court battle ignited Thursday, when lawyers for the family filed an emergency petition in the Western District of Louisiana seeking V.M.L.s immediate release from ICE custody and a declaration that the girls detention had been unlawful. The petition was filed under the name of Trish Mack, who the lawyers indicated had been asked by V.M.L.s father to act as the childs custodian and take her home from ICE custody.
Lawyers for the guardian told the court that V.M.L.s father had been attempting to contact the girls mother to discuss plans for their child 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.
As a U.S. citizen, V.M.L. is likely to have the ability to return to the United States, setting her case apart from others that have drawn national attention in recent weeks, such as the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Salvadoran native was deported to a prison in his home country in violation of a 2019 immigration court order. But the Louisiana case is the latest concern by the courts that the Trump administrations rush to carry out deportations is violating due process rights in this case, the rights of a U.S. citizen child.
Doughty said he attempted to investigate the emergency matter himself on Friday, seeking to get V.M.L.s mother on the phone to determine whether ICEs representation about her desire to bring V.M.L. to Honduras was accurate. The judge said he was independently aware that the plane he believed was carrying the family was already above the Gulf of America.
Trump administration lawyers called the judge back Friday afternoon and said a phone call with the mother would not be possible because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras, Doughty wrote. Doughty then scheduled the May hearing.
Doughty is based in Monroe, Louisiana, about 100 miles north of the staging facility in Alexandria where lawyers who filed the petition said they believed the mother and her daughters were being held prior to their deportation.
Doughtys sharp criticism of the Trump administration is particularly notable because he issued a series of major decisions in favor of Trump and his allies in recent years, most notably backing conservatives in legal challenges to the Biden administrations efforts to rein in what it claimed was misinformation on social media platforms about vaccines and certain politically charged topics.
Indeed, some conservatives considered Doughty so likely to be in their camp that they filed lawsuits in his judicial division in order to have a strong chance the cases would be assigned to him.
Even as Doughty made clear that he was disturbed by the governments actions, in his order Friday the judge seemed to tip his hat to the president, adopting the term Gulf of America for the body of water traditionally known as the Gulf of Mexico.
The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Pick on someone of your own intelligence Donald! Oh I think he did.
back to australia with you
I'm wondering how Fox will try to spin this, they'll either insist she was an MS-13 member or just say nothing about it.
According to the article it sounds like the current manufactured excuse is that the mother wanted to bring the kid with her.You know how South Park does Jennifer Lopez as "Cartman Hand Puppet With Racist Accent?"
Until there is a different source, I will wait.
This fucking asshole is just trying to start riots.
The "pro-life protect the babies" party, presented without comment.If youre pre-born, youre fine. If youre pre-school, youre fucked.
Until there is a different source, I will wait.
Man, if the dems ever miraculously get the seats back these feds need to be aggressively charged with prison time and not just repeat what happened with the confederacy.Reconstruction was such a fucking failure it's unbelievable
Tell us, oh smart one, which are the best "sources"?The ones that confirm their personal bias.
Reconstruction was such a fucking failure it's unbelievablefucking word
Trump administration officials said in court that the mother told ICE officials that she wished to take V.M.L. with her to Honduras. The filing included a handwritten note in Spanish they claimed was written by the mother and confirmed her intent. But the judge said he had hoped to verify that information.
The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her, Doughty wrote. But the Court doesnt know that.
It isn't unlikely that the mother wanted to take her with instead of... throwing her to the nearly literal wolves, but even so without the court being able to verify the veracity of who wrote said note then its basically worthless
It isn't unlikely that the mother wanted to take her with instead of... throwing her to the nearly literal wolves, but even so without the court being able to verify the veracity of who wrote said note then its basically worthless
I'm wondering how Fox will try to spin this, they'll either insist she was an MS-13 member or just say nothing about it.Show a photoshop pictures of her hands showing ms-13 tattoos.
Show a photoshop pictures of her hands showing ms-13 tattoos.they'll use their shitty AI to show fake images of ms-13 tattoos on 15 of her fingers
ICE must be abolished. It's an indictment of our entire system that we had people willing to carry out gestapo orders in our government and they were there before this administration started.don't worry tho, the Trump administration is turning hundreds, and eventually thousands, of regular local police into immigration officers
A new memo from the Trump administration reveals something shocking: ICE agents have been told they can enter homes without a warrant to arrest migrants, based on little more than suspicion.
The March 14 directive, signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, uses an obscure 18th-century law the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to give law enforcement nationwide the power to bypass basic constitutional protections.
According to the memo, agents can break into a home if getting a warrant is impracticable, and they dont need a judges approval. Instead, immigration officers can sign their own administrative warrants. The bar for action is low a reasonable belief that someone might be part of a Venezuelan gang is enough.
Since the memo was issued, CBS News reports the Trump administration has signed 456 agreements with local police departments, letting them act as immigration officers turning traffic stops and routine patrols into immigration raids.
What happened in your life to make you so eager to slobber over the boots of the Gestapo? Why are you like this?
@CobraGT since Politico apparently is not acceptable to you and nor is the court then here's another source for you.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/fury-donald-trump-deports-two-35121895
Good enough for you yet?
New Orleans, LA - Today, in the early hours of the morning, the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office deported at least two families, including two mothers and their minor children three of whom are U.S. citizen children aged 2, 4, and 7. One of the mothers is currently pregnant. The families, who had lived in the United States for years and had deep ties to their communities, were deported from the U.S. under deeply troubling circumstances that raise serious due process concerns.
ICE detained the first family on Tuesday, April 22, and the second family on Thursday, April 24. In both cases, ICE held the families incommunicado, refusing or failing to respond to multiple attempts by attorneys and family members to contact them. In one instance, a mother was granted less than one minute on the phone before the call was abruptly terminated when her spouse tried to provide legal counsels phone number.
As a result, the families were completely isolated during critical moments when decisions were being made about the welfare of their minor children. This included decisions with serious implications for the health, safety, and legal rights of the children involvedwithout any opportunity to coordinate with caretakers or consult with legal representatives.
Like I said at the end, if a legal citizen kid, aged 10-18, chose to follow his mother who got deported, should we have a headline that says KID CITIZEN DEPORTED!If it was done by blatant ratfuckery?
More info here I think
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/ice-deports-3-u-s-citizen-children-held-incommunicado-prior-to-the-deportation
If it was done by blatant ratfuckery?
Yes, gladly, nation-wide, I'll throw $100 bucks in myself for the fucking printing costs.
Because this isn't some "oopsiedoodle," this is exactly what they promised to do.
And with enough people like you, they'll succeed.
Not sure how we get back from this.
US citizens deported, judges arrested, ICE agents entering homes without warrants, etc.And some people still believe we will have fair elections next year, or in 2028. Lol
I hate to say this, but it's pretty much over. Not sure how we get back from this. Republicans are going to do their actual jobs to stop any of this.
above the Gulf of America.The judge should never have called it that.
My bad, I looked more into it and honestly with media reporting now a days I believed that if you were a full blown illegal immigrant you didn't really have any rights or chance for a due process. That was saved for the people with paper work/visas/greencards/etc that had documents here. I understood the concern over deporting those people without a trial but the concern over illegal immigrants getting deported wasn't particularly made clear. Reading more about it I realize now they should've had a judge preside over them before deportation.Due process is for everyone , not just citizens. If anyone doesn't have due process, then literally no one does.
So the situation is pretty fucked up over all. Especially with all the other kids too especially the one with cancer. Along with these kids too that are getting deported with no lawyer or guardians really as well in legal proceedings.
https://gothamist.com/news/4-year-old-migrant-girl-other-kids-go-to-court-in-nyc-with-no-lawyer-the-cruelty-is-apparent