{"id":135303,"date":"2025-04-27T16:36:35","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T16:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-officials-deport-two-year-old-us-citizen-and-mother-of-one-year-old-girl-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-04-27T16:36:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T16:36:35","slug":"trump-officials-deport-two-year-old-us-citizen-and-mother-of-one-year-old-girl-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-officials-deport-two-year-old-us-citizen-and-mother-of-one-year-old-girl-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump officials deport two-year-old US citizen and mother of one-year-old girl – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawyers in both cases, one in Louisiana and another in Florida, say clients arrested at routine Ice check-ins
The Trump administration<\/a> has deported a two-year-old US citizen \u201cwith no meaningful process\u201d, according to a federal judge, while in a different case the authorities deported the mother of a one-year-old girl, separating them indefinitely.
Lawyers in the two cases, the first in Louisiana<\/a> and the second in Florida, say their clients were arrested at routine check-ins at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) offices and were given virtually no opportunity to speak with them or family members.
They are the latest examples of the White House cracking down on<\/a> documented immigrants, including green card holders and also even citizens who have the status by birth or naturalization. The unorthodox policy and the frequent avoidance of due process has brought about a clash with the judicial<\/a> branch of the US government in a battle over the constitution.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Immigration Project and several other allied groups said in a statement that deporting children who are US citizens, as in these two cases, are a \u201cshocking \u2013 although increasingly common \u2013 abuse of power\u201d.
US district judge Terry Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana<\/a>, said the two-year-old girl, who was referred to as VML in court documents, was deported with her mother to Honduras.
\u201cIt is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a US citizen,\u201d said the judge.
He scheduled a hearing for 19 May \u201cin the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process\u201d.
VML was apprehended by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) on Tuesday with her mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, and older sister when Villela attended a routine appointment at its New Orleans<\/a> office, according to a filing by Trish Mack, who said the child\u2019s father asked her to act as the child\u2019s custodian. The girl\u2019s father is seeking to have her returned to the United States.
Immigrants of all sorts with cases in process, pending appeals or parole, have routinely been required to regularly check in with Ice officers<\/a>, sometimes for many years. And so long as they had not violated any regulations or committed any crimes, they were usually sent on their way. Now, as the Trump administration pushes for the mass arrest<\/a> and deportation<\/a> of immigrants, check-ins have become increasingly fraught.
According to Mack, when VML\u2019s father briefly spoke to Villela, he could hear her and the children crying. According to a court document, he reminded her that a US citizen \u201ccould not be deported\u201d.
However, prosecutors said Villela, who has legal custody, told Ice that she wanted to retain custody of the girl and take her to Honduras<\/a>. They said the man claiming to be VML\u2019s father had not presented himself to Ice despite requests to do so.
VML is not prohibited from entering the US, federal prosecutors said..
She was among two families deported from Louisiana, also including one pregnant woman, the advocacy groups noted.
The Department of Homeland Security and the justice department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
\u201cThese actions stand in direct violation of Ice\u2019s own written and informal directives, which mandate coordination for the care of minor children with willing caretakers \u2013 regardless of immigration status \u2013 when deportations are being carried out,\u201d the ACLU said.
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In Florida, meanwhile, a Cuban-born woman who is the mother of a one-year-old girl and the wife of a US citizen was detained at a scheduled check-in with Ice in Tampa, her lawyer said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Heidy S\u00e1nchez was held without any communication and flown to Cuba two days later. She is still breastfeeding her daughter, who suffers from seizures, her lawyer, Claudia Ca\u00f1izares, said.
Ca\u00f1izares said she tried to file paperwork with Ice to contest the deportation on Thursday morning but Ice refused to accept it, saying S\u00e1nchez was already gone. S\u00e1nchez is not a criminal and has a strong case on humanitarian grounds for staying in the US, Ca\u00f1izares said.
Donald Trump<\/a>, whose presidential campaigns have focused heavily<\/a> on immigration, said earlier this month he wanted to deport some violent criminals who are US citizens to El Salvadoran prisons, where he removed hundreds of Venezuelans and some Salvadorans last month without even a court hearing. He sent them to a brutal prison<\/a> for suspected gangsters and terrorists, claiming they were all violent criminals when it has since been argued that most were not and even if they were they had the right to due process.
The comments from Trump about sending US citizens or what he termed \u201chome grown\u201d criminals to another country to be incarcerated have alarmed civil rights advocates and is viewed by many legal scholars as unconstitutional.
The US district judge Paula Xinis has ordered the Trump administration to \u201cfacilitate and effectuate\u201d the return of Maryland resident Kilmar \u00c1brego Garc\u00eda<\/a>, who was sent<\/a> to the country on 15 March with hundreds of others despite a US court order protecting him from deportation.
Opinion polls in the last week show Trump struggling for approval<\/a> with voters who were surveyed, including on some of his hardline anti-immigration tactics.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting<\/em>
This article was amended on 27 April 2025. The US district court, not the supreme court, ordered the Trump administration<\/a> to \u201cfacilitate and effectuate\u201d \u00c1brego Garc\u00eda\u2019s return.<\/p>\n

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Lawyers in both cases, one in Louisiana and another in Florida, say clients arrested at routine Ice check-insThe Trump administration has deported a two-year-old US citizen \u201cwith no meaningful process\u201d, according to a federal judge, while in a different case the authorities deported the mother of a one-year-old girl, separating them indefinitely.Lawyers in the two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":135304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}