US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers gathered in Silver Springs, Maryland.Alex Brandon/AP
On Friday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in New Orleans deported members of two families, including young children and a pregnant mother, under circumstances that have raised serious due process concerns. Among those deported were three children who are US citizens, including a two-year-old who was born in New Orleans and a child with a rare form of metastatic cancer who’d been receiving treatment in the US.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleges that ICE did not allow the mothers and children detained to have substantial or any contact with attorneys and family members, including with the two-year-old’s father.
“If this is what the Trump administration is orchestrating just three months in, we should all be terrified of what the next four years will bring.”
“These families were lawfully complying with ICE’s orders and for this they suffered cruel and traumatic separation,” Mich P. Gonzalez, founding partner of Sanctuary of the South, which provides legal assistance, said in a statement. “If this is what the Trump administration is orchestrating just three months in, we should all be terrified of what the next four years will bring.”
Regarding the child with cancer, Rolling Stone reported that they were “deported out of the country without medication or consultation with their treating physicians,” even though ICE had been notified of the child’s health needs.
The father of the two-year-old filed an emergency petition on Thursday for the child to be released to his custody after he was only able to get one minute on the phone with the child’s mother “before the call was abruptly terminated when her spouse tried to provide legal counsel’s phone number,” according to the ACLU. Chief Judge for the Western District of Louisiana Terry Doughty, who is overseeing the case, wrote that there is a “strong suspicion that the Government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process” to Honduras. The court had asked for a phone call with the child’s mother to assess “her consent and custodial rights,” but the US government said that would not be possible, “because she (and presumably [the two-year-old]) had just been released in Honduras.” There will be a hearing on May 16 to further discuss this case.
According to reporting in Politico, the two-year-old (known in papers by the initials V.M.L) has a good chance of being able to return to the United States, but their case reveals a disturbing lack of disregard for constitutional rights:
As a U.S. citizen, V.M.L. is likely to have the ability to return to the United States, setting her case apart from others that have drawn national attention in recent weeks, such as the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Salvadoran native was deported to a prison in his home country in violation of a 2019 immigration court order. But the Louisiana case is the latest concern by the courts that the Trump administration’s rush to carry out deportations is violating due process rights — in this case, the rights of a U.S. citizen child.
“Deporting US citizen children is illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral,” Erin Hebert of law firm Ware Immigration said in a statement on these cases. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable,” Hebert wrote, “and every official responsible for it should be held accountable.”
Update, April 26, 2025, 1:12pm ET: A senior official from the Department of Homeland Security wrote in an email that in the case of the two-year-old, “the parent made the decision to take the child with them to Honduras.” The official added: “We take our responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to ensure that children are safe and protected.”
