from the sadists-are-running-the-shop dept
Does anyone want to be OK with this just because it might end up barely clearing the legality bar? Is this what the US wants to be known for: the forcible expulsion of anyone originating south of our borders just because the current administration doesn’t want to share space with undocumented (but otherwise law-abiding) immigrants? Is it time to cut Lady Liberty off at the knees and shove her hulking metal carcass into the bay?
Fortunately, a judge — a conservative one at that — is asking at least one question about this turn of events, even if it isn’t any of the questions listed above.
A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said the child — identified in court papers by the initials “V.M.L.” — appeared to have been released in Honduras earlier Friday, along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, who had been detained by immigration officials earlier in the week.
The judge on Friday scheduled a hearing for May 16, which he said was “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
I don’t know, judge. Your interest may be well-placed but it’s getting pretty fucking difficult to “dispel strong suspicions” that the government is just deporting people — citizens or not — with no meaningful due process. That’s why this administration has resurrected the Alien Enemies Act. That law all but eliminates due process from the equation so long as federal agents can boilerplate together stuff about tattoos and gang affiliations to pile on top of the utter bullshit that supposedly necessitates the revival of long-dormant law.
The government was no more inclined to give the US-born child due process rights than it was to extend them to her undocumented parents. Instead, ICE simply grabbed the child’s mother, along with her older sibling, during a routine compliance check-in, threw them on a jet, and sent them back to Honduras. Well, “back” except for the two-year-old, who was born in the United States.
The government hasn’t offered much in response to US resident/apparent designated legal caretaker for the 2-year-old US citizen motion for a restraining order blocking the child’s deportation. And why should it? It’s already a done deal.
What it has offered is a hand-written note allegedly written by the child’s mother declaring her intent to have her youngest child deported with her. It also claims most parents want their US-born children deported with him, an assertion that can’t possibly be true if these parents migrated to the United States to give themselves and their offspring a better life.
The child’s father (also an undocumented immigrant) clearly felt the two-year-old would be better off staying in the US with an appointed guardian. That’s why he appointed one as soon as he found out ICE had detained his child. Fearing deportation of his own if he went to claim his child, he signed paperwork making another US resident the child’s legal guardian.
ICE promised to put the guardian in touch with the child’s mother to see if she really wanted to take the child to Honduras with her. Then it blew the guardian (and the court) off until the child was already out of the US and en route to Honduras.
That’s where Terry Doughty comes in. He’s apparently a big fan of Trump and his policies, which makes him a prime landing spot for cases the administration (and other Republican legislators) want to win. But that doesn’t work here.
The short order [PDF] makes it clear this isn’t something the government is just going to be able to ignore. There’s no unsettled question of legality that requires in-depth discussion.
Of course, “It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend
deportation of a U.S. citizen.” See Lyttle v. United States, 2012
Open. Shut. On top of that, a handwritten note and some generalizations about deported parents aren’t the smoking guns the government seems to think they are. (Emphasis in the original.)
The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the Court doesn’t know that.
Precisely. Then there’s the fact that the government moved as quickly as it could to carry out this miscarriage of justice before the court could tell it to stop.
Seeking the path of least resistance, the Court called counsel for the Government at 12:19 p.m. CST, so that we could speak with VML’s mother and survey her consent and custodial rights. The Court was independently aware at the time that the plane, tail number N570TA, was above the Gulf of America. The Court was then called back by counsel for the Government at 1:06 p.m. CST, informing the Court that a call with VML’s mother would not be possible, because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras.
Well, I guess he’s still a bit Trumpian. But the deliberate misgendering (or whatever) of the Gulf of Mexico aside, this chain of events doesn’t make the government look any less shady. Dispelling the “strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process” is all but impossible at this point. Of course, even if it’s shown the child was supposed to remain in the United States, it’s all but guaranteed it will take a heated, protracted legal battle to force the Trump Administration to do something it hasn’t done yet: press the undo button on an illegal deportation.
Filed Under: dhs, donald trump, ice, immigration, mass deportations, terry doughty, us citizens
