A federal judge in Louisiana has scheduled a hearing next month over a “strong suspicion” that the Trump administration deported a 2-year-old U.S. citizen “with no meaningful process.”
In an order issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty is pushing to get information as to whether the administration removed the 2-year-old child, identified as “VML” in court documents, to Honduras alongside her mother, who Doughty said is an undocumented immigrant.
The judge detailed in his order how the court tried to reach the toddler’s mother on Friday knowing that they were being flown out of the U.S. at the time, but was informed by government lawyers that the woman could not be contacted because she and presumably her daughter “had just been released in Honduras.”
“It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen,” Doughty wrote, citing a 2012 deportation case.
Attorneys for the family had filed a petition Thursday seeking the toddler’s immediate release by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to a custodian appointed by her father. They said immigration officers took into custody the toddler — who was born in Baton Rouge — her 11-year-old sister and her mother during a routine check-in with the “Intensive Supervision Appearance Program” on April 22.
Later that day, when the father tried to contact VML’s mother, he was only allowed to speak to her for “about or less than a minute” over the phone.
According to the petition:
He heard his daughters crying and his partner crying. He reminded V.M.L.’s mother that their daughter was a U.S. citizen and could not be deported. The officer overheard and said that V.M.L. would not be deported and explained that V.M.L.’s mother and sister had deportation orders. V.M.L.’s father began to give V.M.L.’s mother the phone number for their attorneys, but before he could, he heard the ICE officer take the phone from her and hang up the call.
The next morning, when an attorney for the father spoke with ICE New Orleans Field Director Melissa Harper on the phone, she “began interrogating the attorney as to V.M.L.’s father’s immigration status,” the petition said. Harper told the attorney that ICE would not release the toddler because she “was already with her mother” and that “the father could try to pick her up, but that he would also be taken into custody,” according to the family’s attorneys.
Government lawyers said the toddler’s mother had indicated in a handwritten letter dated Thursday at 6:23 p.m. that she would take her daughter to Honduras, NBC News reported. But the judge noted that the court had not independently determined that. “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,” Doughty wrote.
He ordered a hearing in the case on May 16.
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment late on Friday.
The American Civil Liberties Union raised alarm on Friday about the 2-year-old’s removal as well, and said that the Trump administration also removed another family with two U.S. citizen children ages 4 and 7 that morning. The deportation of both families took place “under deeply troubling circumstances that raise serious due process concerns,” the ACLU said.
UPDATE (April 29, 2025; 3:15 p.m. ET): This post has been updated to reflect that the ACLU’s press release on Friday was referencing two families that included the family of 2-year-old V.M.L., and not two families in addition to V.M.L.’s.
