The Trump administration took a two-year-old U.S. citizen into custody,
along with her mother and sister,
and deported the child to Honduras with little to no individualized process,
prompting sharp concern from a conservative federal judge on Friday.
The Justice Department does not appear to dispute the underlying facts, given its position in a filing faxed to the court about 3:45 a.m. CT Friday in response to a habeas petition filed on behalf of the child, referred to as V.M.L., on Thursday evening.
Instead, the Justice Department’s entire argument was simply that,
once in custody and told she was going to be deported,
V.M.L.’s mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, wrote a note stating that she would bring her two-year-old daughter with her to Honduras.
As the habeas petition made clear, however, many federal officials knew that both V.M.L.’s father, Adiel Mendez Sagastume, and provisional custodian, Trish Mack, were desperately trying to get in touch with Jenny and/or get V.M.L. released to them throughout the 70 hours between when the two of them and Jenny’s other child were taken into custody and flown to Texas before Friday’s flight to Honduras.
On Friday, in the wake of all of this information, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty issued an order setting a hearing “[i]n the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
https://www.lawdork.com/p/trump-deports-two-year-old-us-citizen
Chuck Darwin /
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2025-04-26 03:58:18
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2025-04-26 03:58:18Event JSON
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