Lawyers representing the father of the 2-yr-old #UScitizen who was deported, identified as V.M.L. in court documents, filed an emergency petition in the Western District of Louisiana on Thurs seeking her release. The child was put on a plane to #Honduras the next morning before the court opened.

The #US govt has never released data on how many US #citizens have been wrongfully detained or deported by #ICE. But independent investigations have revealed that ICE has arrested, detained, deported & issued detainers—requests to local jails to hold a person in custody—for thousands of citizens since the agency’s creation in 2003.

“I don’t know how much more of a blatant or clear constitutional violation there can be than deporting #US #citizens without #DueProcess,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director of the #ACLU of Louisiana. “Especially with some of those citizens being the most vulnerable of all vulnerable, #children, & not just any children, children with #medical conditions that are dire.”

The judge expressed concern that a plane carrying the mother & her daughters was by then already “above the Gulf of America.” His suspicions were confirmed, he wrote, when a lawyer for the #Trump #DOJ told him at 1:06PM that day that Ms. Lopez Villela & presumably her #children “had just been released in Honduras.”

“The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the #child be deported with her,” wrote Judge Doughty, a conservative #Trump appointee. “But the court doesn’t know that.”

Asserting that “it is #illegal & #unconstitutional to deport” a #UScitizen, Judge Doughty set a hearing for May 16 to explore his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

In a brief order issued from Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, Judge Terry A. Doughty questioned why the #Trump admin had sent the #child — known in court papers only as V.M.L. — to Honduras with her mother even though her father had sought in an emergency petition on Thurs to stop the girl from being sent abroad.

“All around them people are crying, fainting, & having panic attacks due to the stress,” Welch said. She’s interviewed hundreds of #kids who’ve been detained after crossing the #border. In #Texas, though, she had an unusual experience—some of the #children she met weren’t recent #immigrants. They had been in the country for years.

In late March, Leecia Welch, a deputy #litigation director at #ChildrensRights, a #legal nonprofit that represents #children in government custody, visited a #family #jail in #Texas that the #Trump Admin had recently reopened. The immigrant children Welch met were #hungry, #SleepDeprived, & bored [lacking educational activity].

The grants sent millions of dollars to organizations that support #intervention programs for #nonviolent youth offenders; programs to avert #opioid-related deaths in #Newark; programs aimed at identifying community-based approaches to preventing #HateCrimes against #Arab, #Jewish & #Asian Americans; & a confidential hotline run by the National Center for #Victims of #Crime to inform crime victims about their rights.

Harsono met his future wife in 2022 while studying for his MBA, & they married the next year. They now have an 8-month-old daughter, Adalet, who recently learned how to say “da da” during calls with her jailed father.

“I just wanna kiss my wife on her forehead, & hold my daughter as tight as I can,” Harsono said Wednesday night. “I wanna be there for my daughter.”

@WarnerCrocker @bodhipaksa

To add some unasked for context, the #TheCrueltyIsThePoint crowd wants The Others™ to be just as afraid as they are of the world, themselves, and things they dont understand.

They want a fearful people to cry.

The tears are what fill their cup.

Being anguished rather than hopeful, joyful, and ruthless is the emotion the Creepy Weirdos are seeking to provoke.

@heidilifeldman

Quite frankly, I don’t know what to do with this cruel immoral dictator Trump.

If I had my way, I would rather hire mercenaries to break into that #ElSalvador prison and BRING HIM BACK!

@exchgr