Five-year-old Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos, a US citizen born in Austin, Texas, was deported to Honduras on 11 January alongside her mother, Karen Guadalupe Gutiérrez Castellanos, despite having never lived outside the United States. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents acted on an administrative deportation order issued against Gutiérrez in 2019, before her daughter was born. According to Gutiérrez, officers dismissed her repeated statements that her child was a US citizen, took Génesis without preparation, and instructed both to get into a vehicle.

Mother and daughter were held for nearly 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. Activists and legal analysts have pointed to procedural irregularities in the case, including the lack of judicial review and limited access to legal counsel, and have compared it to other recent cases involving detained children. They argue the incident reflects broader consequences of intensified immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.

Gutiérrez has lived in the United States since 2018, after leaving Honduras in search of economic stability. Although she received a deportation order in 2019, she remained in the country and later gave birth to Génesis in 2020. After separating from her daughter’s father following domestic abuse, Gutiérrez applied for a U visa, a form of relief available to victims of certain crimes. Her application was still pending at the time of her detention, amid a well-documented backlog in processing such cases.

In early January, Austin police responded to a domestic disturbance at Gutiérrez’s home. Officers reported discovering an active ICE warrant and contacted federal authorities. ICE then took both mother and child into custody, transporting them to San Antonio and housing them in a hotel. Gutiérrez said she was unable to contact her family for several days and was reportedly instructed not to disclose her location. An immigration attorney attempting to intervene said ICE could not locate the pair in its database, a problem analysts say has increasingly hindered legal representation when detainees are held outside formal detention facilities.

After arriving in Honduras, Gutiérrez and her daughter began staying with relatives. Because Génesis is a US citizen, Gutiérrez said she plans to send her daughter back to the United States with another family member so she can return to school and rejoin relatives. She described the decision as deeply painful but necessary for her daughter’s future, and said she intends to continue pursuing legal avenues to reunite with her.

The case comes amid renewed legal and political debate over immigration enforcement and birthright citizenship. On his inauguration day, Trump signed an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, though courts across the country blocked the move, citing constitutional and legal precedent. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 5.3 million US citizen children live with at least one undocumented parent, a demographic that experts say faces increasing uncertainty as deportations continue.