Horrifying!
A 2-year-old #UScitizen was deported ‘with no meaningful process,’ a judge suspects.
A federal judge in Louisiana expressed concern on Friday that the #Trump admin had deported a 2-year-old US #citizen to #Honduras “with no meaningful process” & against the wishes of her father.
#law #immigration #TheCrueltyIsThePoint #DueProcess #judiciary
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/us-citizen-deported.html?smid=url-share
In a brief order issued from Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, Judge Terry A. Doughty questioned why the #Trump admin had sent the #child — known in court papers only as V.M.L. — to Honduras with her mother even though her father had sought in an emergency petition on Thurs to stop the girl from being sent abroad.
#law #immigration #TheCrueltyIsThePoint #DueProcess #judiciary
“The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the #child be deported with her,” wrote Judge Doughty, a conservative #Trump appointee. “But the court doesn’t know that.”
Asserting that “it is #illegal & #unconstitutional to deport” a #UScitizen, Judge Doughty set a hearing for May 16 to explore his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
#law #immigration #TheCrueltyIsThePoint #DueProcess #judiciary
Acc/to court papers, the 2-year-old girl had accompanied her mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, & her older sister, Valeria, to an #immigration appointment in NewOrleans on Tues when they were taken into custody by #ICE.
Ms. Lopez Villela was scheduled for an expedited removal from the country on Fri. And in a filing to Judge Doughty, lawyers for the #Trump #DOJ claimed that she “made known to ICE officials that she wanted to retain custody of VML & for VML to go” w/her to Honduras.
But in a petition filed by the #child’s custodian, Trish Mack, on Thurs, her father claimed that when he spoke briefly w/Ms. Lopez Villela, he could hear her & the #children crying. The father reminded her, the petition said, that “their daughter was a #UScitizen & could not be deported.”
The father, who was not identified by name in the petition, tried to give Ms. Lopez Villela the phone number for a lawyer, but he claims that officials cut short the call.
The detention of VML “is without any basis in #law & violates her fundamental #DueProcess rights,” the petition said. “She seeks this court’s urgent action & asks the court to order her immediate release to her custodian Trish Mack, who is ready & waiting to take her home.”
Judge Doughty said in his order that he tried to investigate what had happened himself by trying to get Ms. Lopez Villela on the phone on Friday shortly after noon to “survey her consent & custodial rights.”
The judge expressed concern that a plane carrying the mother & her daughters was by then already “above the Gulf of America.” His suspicions were confirmed, he wrote, when a lawyer for the #Trump #DOJ told him at 1:06PM that day that Ms. Lopez Villela & presumably her #children “had just been released in Honduras.”
#law #immigration #TheCrueltyIsThePoint #DueProcess #judiciary #Constitution #AbuseOfPower
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