Girl, 5, deported to Honduras despite being US citizen, becomes latest victim of Trump crackdown

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/27/five-year-old-girl-us-citizen-and-mother-deported-honduras

Girl, 5, deported to Honduras despite being US citizen, becomes latest victim of Trump crackdown

Mother whose visa application was pending says she will send girl back to US soon accompanied by another relative

Claudia Mendoza in Puerto Cortés, Honduras, and Tiago Rogero in Rio de Janeiro
Tue 27 Jan 2026 09.34 EST

Five-year-old Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos misses her cousins, classmates and kindergarten teachers in Austin, Texas. Despite being a US citizen, she was deported on 11 January alongside her mother, Karen Guadalupe Gutiérrez Castellanos, to Honduras, a country Génesis had never known.

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“I kept telling them ‘the girl was born here’. They didn’t care, they picked up the child, just put a jumper on her and told me to get into the car with her,” Gutiérrez told the Guardian.

The two were held for almost a week in a hotel 80 miles from their home, without access to a lawyer or a hearing before a judge, before being deported to the Central American country.

Activists and analysts point to a string of procedural violations in the case and note similarities with other recent detentions of children, such as that of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos in Minneapolis. They see it as a chilling indication of what may lie ahead as Donald Trump’s administration continues with mass deportations.

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