A Trump-nominated federal judge in Louisiana said that a 2-year-old American citizen appears to have been deported "with no meaningful process." This comes as the Trump administration has faced growing criticisms for its hurried proceedings to remove as many noncitizens from the country as quickly as possible.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty wrote that the toddler, identified as VML, had been sent to Honduras on Friday, alongside her mother and sister, even as the court had sought to clarify the girl's status. He set a hearing on the case for May 16 "in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."
On Friday afternoon, Doughty had called counsel for the federal government to try to speak with VML's mother and better understand the child's situation, but VML and her family were already "above the Gulf of America," the judge wrote, using President Trump's preferred term for the Gulf of Mexico.