A federal judge said Friday a two-year-old US citizen was deported with her mother to Honduras. The Trump administration says her mother asked officials to take her with her, documents show.

US District Judge Terry Doughty said the child, identified in the court documents as V.M.L., was released in Honduras Friday afternoon alongside her mother, who the judge said is an undocumented immigrant.

Lawyers for the family filed an emergency petition Thursday, asking the court to order the child’s “immediate release” by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying they “lack any statutory or constitutional authority” to detain her as a US citizen, according to the petition.

The child was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on January 4, 2023, the petition says. The child was taken into custody by ICE Tuesday morning with her mother and her 11-year-old sister, while the mother was “attending a routine check-in” with the federal agency, according to the petition.

“In the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process,” Judge Doughty said in the order, a hearing is scheduled on May 16 in Monroe, Louisiana.

The judge added, “It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen,” citing a 2012 deportation case.

The federal government, Doughty said, “contends this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her … But the court doesn’t know that.”

The court documents filed by the government opposing the petition argued that the child’s mother, “made known to ICE officials she wanted to retain custody of V.M.L.” in a handwritten note and requested for the child to go with her to Honduras.

Authorities in Honduras, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, lawyers for the family and the US Justice Department did not immediately return requests for comment.

Roughly an hour after the mother and her two daughters went into the agency’s office in New Orleans, the father received a call from the agency saying, “the family had all been taken to the immigration office and gave him an address,” the petition says.

When the father arrived at the address, which led him to the ICE field office in New Orleans, officers gave him a paper saying the mother was “under their custody” and said they could not give him any more information but V.M.L’.s mother “would call him soon,” the petition said.

An ICE officer was then in contact with the father’s attorney, informing him the mother’s deportation “was certain and he believed they were all in a hotel” but would not disclose the location, according to the petition, nor could he facilitate a legal call between the attorney and the child’s mother.

The same day, the father was again contacted by an ICE officer who said the mother was in their custody and informed the father that the mother and daughters were going to be deported, court documents showed. “He heard his daughters crying and his partner crying. He reminded V.M.L.’s mother that their daughter was a US citizen and could not be deported,” the documents say.

Before the father could finish providing the mother with contact information for their attorneys, he heard the ICE officer “take the phone from her and hang up the call,” according to the petition.

The father then moved to give provisional custody of his two daughters to his sister-in-law, a US citizen who lives in Baton Rouge, and the mandate was notarized in Louisiana, the documents say.

The petition alleges ICE refused to honor the father’s request to release V.M.L. to the sister-in-law, stating “it was not needed” because the child was already with her mother, and informed the father he would be taken into custody if he tried to pick her up.

The federal government said in court documents the mother wrote in a letter she “will bring my daughter … with me to Honduras.”

The government said the “man claiming to be V.M.L.’s father” has not presented or identified himself to ICE despite requests to do so, the court documents say.

“V.M.L. is not at substantial risk of irreparable harm if kept with her lawful custodian mother,” the government said.

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