Judge demands answers on whether 2-year-old U.S. citizen was deported to Honduras
A federal judge says a 2-year-old Louisiana girl and U.S. citizen may have been deported to Honduras this week with her mother and 11-year-old sister without due process, according to court documents obtained by CBS News.
In an order Friday, Judge Terry Doughty, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, wrote there was a "strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."
When Doughty, appointed to the bench by President Trump during his first term, sought Friday afternoon to arrange a phone call with the mother of the girl, Justice Department lawyers informed him that a call with the child's mother "would not be possible because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras." The girl is identified in court documents as VML.
The immigration status of the girl's father, mother and sister was unclear. The girl was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in January 2023, according to the filing.
"The parent made the decision to take the child with them to Honduras. It is common that parents want to be removed with their children," Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to CBS News Saturday.
According to a petition filed Thursday by Trish Mack, a friend of child's mother, the girl, her 11-year-old sister and mother were taken into custody Tuesday morning while attending a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at an ICE office in New Orleans. The mother had attended meetings like this regularly for four years, often bringing her daughters with her. They were taken to the meeting by the girl's father, the petition reads.
After being detained, the mother and her two daughters were transported to an ICE field office in New Orleans, court documents state. When the father arrived at that office, ICE officers gave him papers stating that the mother "was under their custody," documents read, and that she "would call him soon."
That day, an attorney for the family contacted ICE and informed authorities that the girl was a U.S. citizen, the petition said, and also emailed a copy of the girl's U.S. birth certificate to ICE.
But that night, an ICE agent called the father and informed him that "they were going to deport his partner and daughters," documents read.
In an effort to halt the deportation of the two daughters, the father on Tuesday filed for a temporary transfer of legal custody, which under Louisiana law would give his sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen who resides in Baton Rouge, custody of both.
On Wednesday, an ICE agent spoke with the family's attorney, and "refused to honor a request to release" the girl "to her custodian, stating that it was not needed because" she "was already with her mother," court documents read.
The ICE agent further said that the "father could try to pick her up, but that he would also be taken into custody."
Doughty has scheduled a hearing for May 16 in the case.
Since beginning his second term in January, President Trump has pursued an aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration that has sparked a flurry of lawsuits and prompted scrutiny over whether it is violating federal law.
The Trump administration is facing criticism over the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was living in Maryland and who the Justice Department has admitted was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month.
Despite a Supreme Court ruling that stated the Trump administration must facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S., Mr. Trump in an interview published Friday in Time magazine said he has not reached out to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to do so.
