“What do you do with U.S. citizen children when a noncitizen parent is deported? The Trump administration has so far answered this question by saying, Well, actually, it’s not much of a question at all, hurry up and deport them already, let’s not ask any questions or consult any lawyers.”
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“Doughty, who President Donald Trump appointed, issued an order expressing his fear that the toddler had been deported against her father’s wishes, noting that it is “illegal and unconstitutional” to deport U.S. citizens. “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,” wrote the judge. “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.” A hearing is set for May 16 due to the judge’s “strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.””
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“Two other U.S. citizen children were deported to Honduras with their illegal immigrant mother, denying the 4-year-old child—who has metastatic cancer—access to his medication.
Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, told NBC that the boy with cancer and his 7-year-old sister were detained on Thursday; taken to El Paso, Texas; and flown to Honduras on Friday morning.”
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“the deported mothers not have sufficient access to attorneys or family members to make arrangements for the care of minor children. This runs contra ICE’s own policies, “which mandate coordination for the care of minor children with willing caretakers—regardless of immigration status—when deportations are being carried out,””
“Trump administration officials admitted that Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested without a warrant.”
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“The attorneys argued that the Department of Homeland Security wasn’t required to get a warrant because they had reason to believe that Khalil was likely to “escape” before one would be obtained.”
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“Khalil is far from the first legal resident to face deportation for pro-Palestine speech. Last month Rubio said that he had cancelled around 300 student visas. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not become a social activist that tears up our university campuses,” Rubio told reporters. “And if we’ve given you a visa and you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away””
“The results were both bizarre and, for the students, terrifying. Students with years-old DUIs, misdemeanor gambling charges, traffic violations and other minor infractions learned their immigration status had been canceled. In some instances, the schools told the students they could face immediate deportation. And as lawsuits began to pile up, the Justice Department compounded their fear further, with government lawyers saying they couldn’t verify whether those students remained in the country legally.
Judges recoiled at the lack of information, ordering the administration in several individual cases to undo the damage and restore the students’ records to the immigration database, known as SEVIS. On Friday, the administration said it would restore the canceled records and no longer terminate students’ files based solely on information pulled from the FBI’s criminal record system.”
“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.”
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“Trump administration officials said in court that the mother told ICE officials that she wished to take V.M.L. with her to Honduras. The filing included a handwritten note in Spanish they claimed was written by the mother and confirmed her intent. But the judge said he had hoped to verify that information.
“The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty wrote. “But the Court doesn’t know that.””
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“The court battle ignited Thursday, when lawyers for the family filed an emergency petition in the Western District of Louisiana seeking V.M.L.’s immediate release from ICE custody and a declaration that the girl’s detention had been unlawful. The petition was filed under the name of Trish Mack, who the lawyers indicated had been asked by V.M.L.’s father to act as the child’s custodian and take her home from ICE custody.
Lawyers for the guardian told the court that V.M.L.’s father had been attempting to contact the girl’s mother to discuss plans for their child but ICE officials denied him the chance to have a substantive phone call. He says ICE allowed the two to speak for about one minute on Tuesday, while the mother was in ICE custody, but that they were unable to make any meaningful decisions about their child.”
“During what was probably the low point of the 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President J.D. Vance falsely accused Haitian immigrants living in his home state of Ohio of kidnapping, killing, and eating pets. He then doubled down by challenging the legal status of those same immigrants.
“I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” Vance said defiantly in late September, despite the fact that many Haitian immigrants in the U.S. have legal status under a federal policy called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is granted to migrants who cannot return safely to their home countries due to natural disasters or conflicts. At the time, Vance argued that TPS for Haitians was illegitimate because “Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally.”
In reality, the TPS program for Haitians had been in place since the Obama administration, when it was implemented in response to a devastating earthquake. President Joe Biden extended TPS status for Haitians—legally, despite what Vance claimed—last year.
The Trump administration is now partially reversing that extension and retconning reality to match Vance’s politically motivated delusions.”
“Family and friends of a Venezuelan migrant living in Texas say officials sent him to an El Salvador mega-prison because he had an autism awareness tattoo.
Neri Jose Alvarado Borges was one of the hundreds of men deported by immigration authorities on March 15 to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, one of the most dangerous prisons in the world, his friends and family told NBC Dallas Fort Worth on Monday.
Borges has a tattoo that features a rainbow-colored ribbon composed of puzzle pieces, a symbol for autism awareness, along with the name of Borges’s autistic brother, according to the local outlet.”
“A US-born man initially charged with being an “unauthorized alien” in Florida has been released after spending the night in jail on a 48-hour hold requested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the Trump administration’s broad deportation crackdown.
Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, 20, was arrested by Florida Highway Patrol on Wednesday when the car he was riding in was pulled over for a traffic stop, said his attorney, Mutaqee Akbar. The American citizen – born in Grady County, Georgia, where he lives in the city of Cairo – was crossing into Florida for his work in construction in Tallahassee, about 45 minutes from home.
The new Florida law that Lopez-Gomez was arrested under – designed to discourage undocumented immigrants from entering the state and touted by its Republican leaders – had been temporarily blocked by a judge, according to news reports and a spokesperson for the immigrant rights coalition working with Lopez-Gomez’s family.
A state judge later found no probable cause for the charge of crossing into Florida illegally, but she said didn’t have jurisdiction to release Lopez-Gomez because of the ICE hold, court records show.
It was not immediately clear why Lopez-Gomez may have been the subject of an immigration detainer, with which ICE asks law enforcement agencies to notify it “before releasing a removable alien” and to “hold the alien for up to 48 hours” to give its umbrella agency, the Department of Homeland Security, time to take the migrant into custody.
While “no US citizen is a proper subject of a detainer, … many US citizens have been the mistaken subject of ICE detainers and even prolonged detention and removal, despite their assertion of citizenship,” according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a non-profit working on such issues since 1979.”
“Ten-year legal U.S. resident and Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi showed up at an immigration center in Vermont on Monday for what he thought was his naturalization appointment. Instead, ICE agents swooped in and “refused to provide any information as to where he was being taken or what would happen to him,” according to a statement by Vermont lawmakers.”
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“Mahdawi co-founded the Palestinian student union at Columbia, and Mahdawi was president of the Columbia University Buddhist Association for two years, according to the court filings. While Khalil is soft-spoken in public, Mahdawi comes off as the hothead of the duo. He has been frank about his struggles between feelings of vengeance and forgiveness.
“Radicalism is not Justice, and will not make Justice,” he wrote on Instagram in November 2024. “Justice is balanced, Justice is compassionate, Justice is empathetic, and Justice is transformative.”
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“Mahdawi hasn’t been accused of any crime, according to a habeas corpus petition filed by his lawyers. Vermont District Court Judge William Sessions issued a temporary restraining order preventing ICE from removing Mahdawi from Vermont.”
“In general, a foreign national is neither excludable nor deportable “because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States.” But the INA makes an exception when “the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.” The only statutory requirement to invoke that exception is that the secretary of state “has reasonable ground to believe” that someone’s “presence or activities” would “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.””
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“Giving “a single government official sweeping and nearly unchecked power to pick and choose individuals to deport based on beliefs alone, without alleging a single crime, crosses a line that should never be crossed in a free society,” Creeley said. “The only ‘crime’ the government has offered [is] that Mahmoud Khalil expressed a disfavored political opinion. If that’s a crime in America, every single one of us is guilty.””