Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
A deportation officer with Enforcement and Removal Operations in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's New York City field office conducts a brief before an early morning operation, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024, in the Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have in recent days deported a Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old girl, separating them indefinitely, and in another case a 2-year-old girl who is a U.S. citizen along with her Honduran-born mother, their lawyers say.
Both cases raise questions about who is being deported, and why, and come amid a battle in federal courts over whether President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown has gone too far and too quickly at the expense of fundamental rights.
Lawyers in the two cases described how their clients were arrested at routine check-ins at ICE offices, given virtually no opportunity to speak with lawyers or their family members and then deported within two or three days.
A federal judge in Louisiana raised questions about the deportation of the 2-year-old girl, saying the government had not proven that it had done so properly.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that that case and another in New Orleans that involves deporting children who are U.S. citizens are a "shocking - although increasingly common -- abuse of power."
Lawyers for the girl's father insisted he wanted the girl to remain with him in the U.S., while ICE contended the mother had wanted the girl to be deported with her to Honduras, claims that weren't fully vetted by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Louisiana.
Doughty in a Friday order scheduled a hearing on May 16 "in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process," he wrote.
The Honduran-born mother was arrested Tuesday along with the 2-year-old girl and her 11-year-old Honduran-born sister during a check-in appointment at an ICE office in New Orleans. Both the mother and 11-year-old girl apparently had outstanding deportation orders. The family lived in Baton Rouge.
Doughty called government lawyers on Friday to speak to the woman while she was in the air on a deportation plane, only to be called back less than an hour later saying a conversation was impossible because she "had just been released in Honduras."
In a Thursday court filing, lawyers for the father said ICE indicated that it was holding the 2-year-old girl in a bid to induce the father to turn himself in