U.S. authorities deported a 2-year-old American girl and her mother to Honduras, a federal judge in the southern state of Louisiana announced on Saturday (April 26, 2025), deploring the lack of formal procedures in the case.
This new case is the latest in a series of challenges to the Trump administration’s immigration policy, which involves mass expulsions of migrants residing illegally in the country.
Federal Judge Terry Doughty scheduled a hearing for May 16 to “dispel the strong suspicion that the government has just deported a U.S. citizen without due process,” according to a court document released Friday.
According to the file, the Trump administration does not dispute the facts, but maintains that the deportation of the girl, identified as VML, occurred at the express request of her mother, who was deported from the country for lacking proper documentation.
The judge reiterated that the law prohibits the deportation of U.S. citizens.
“The government maintains that this is normal because the mother wanted the child to go with her. But the Court ignores this,” the judge wrote in his order.
According to him, the girl was deported along with her mother, originally from Honduras, after being detained earlier this week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Xiomara Castro offers support to the mother
The decision also comes amid a legal battle over an executive order Trump signed upon returning to the White House in January that seeks to abolish the constitutional principle of birthright citizenship in the United States.
Several district courts blocked it, and the application of the order was suspended nationwide, but the Supreme Court will review the issue on May 15, one day before the hearing on the girl’s case.
This Saturday, the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, offered her support to the expelled mother.
“I offer our full support to the minor’s mother in the decisions she makes, and I have ordered that we follow Judge Doughty’s orders,” the president wrote on the social network X without specifying the whereabouts of the woman and her daughter.
Lawyers for the girl’s father filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking her release.
American media have identified the mother as Jenny Carolina López Villela.
One of the most notable cases among recent deportations is that of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran man sent by the United States to a mega-prison in his home country due to an “administrative error.”
U.S. courts ordered his return to the country, but the measure has not been implemented.