Five-year-old US citizen deported to Honduras with her mother

Five-year-old Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos, a US citizen who had been living in Austin, Texas, was deported on 11 January alongside her mother, Karen Guadalupe Gutiérrez Castellanos, to Honduras, a country Génesis had never known. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were acting on an administrative deportation order against Gutiérrez, 26, issued in 2019, before Génesis was born.

Gutiérrez said she told officers “the girl was born here” but that they “picked up the child, just put a jumper on her and told me to get into the car with her.” The mother and child were held for almost a week in a hotel about 80 miles from their home, without access to a lawyer or a hearing before a judge, before being deported, Grassroots Leadership reported.

Gutiérrez had lived in the US since 2018, received a deportation order in 2019, and had a U visa application pending; Génesis was born in 2020. Activists and analysts have pointed to procedural violations and noted similarities with other recent detentions of children.

Key Topics

Politics, Génesis Gutiérrez, Karen Gutiérrez, Ice, Austin, Honduras