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A federal judge in Louisiana said the deportation of the child to Honduras with her mother, even though her father had filed an emergency petition, appeared to be “illegal and unconstitutional.”
Published April 25, 2025Updated April 26, 2025, 1:25 a.m. ET
A federal judge in Louisiana expressed concern on Friday that the Trump administration had deported a 2-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras “with no meaningful process” and against the wishes of her father.
In a brief order issued from Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, Judge Terry A. Doughty questioned why the administration 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 Thursday to stop the girl from being sent abroad.
“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 and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, 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.”
The case of V.M.L., which was reported earlier by Politico, is the latest challenge to the legality of several aspects of President Trump’s aggressive deportation efforts.
The administration has already been blocked by seven federal judges in courts across the country from removing Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members to El Salvador under a rarely invoked wartime statute. It has also created an uproar by wrongfully deporting a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to El Salvador and so far refusing to work to bring him back.
