ICE Deported 5-Year-Old US Citizen to Honduras Without Notifying Family, Report Claims

Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos, a five-year-old US citizen, was reportedly deported to Honduras by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Sunday, 11 January 2026, alongside her mother without prior notification to relatives or access to legal intervention.

The child and her mother, Karen, were removed from the country less than a week after an Austin Police Department (APD) 911 call led to their detention, despite the girl's birthright citizenship.

Advocacy groups, led by Grassroots Leadership, allege that the pair was held 'incommunicado' in a San Antonio hotel and pressured not to disclose their location, preventing attorneys from intervening before the flight departed.

The deportation has raised urgent questions about procedural safeguards, children's rights in immigration enforcement, and the transparency of law-enforcement cooperation with local police.

The case has also become a focal point for immigration advocates who say it illustrates broader patterns of family separation and due process failures under current federal enforcement practices.

What Reportedly Happened

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported a Central Texas mother and her 5-year-old daughter, Génesis Ester, to Honduras. The mother, Karen (surname not fully disclosed in reports), was detained by federal agents after the Austin Police Department responded to a call for a disturbance at a residence earlier that week.

While Austin police officers reported finding no active disturbance upon arrival, they identified that the mother had an administrative immigration warrant and notified ICE. Both the mother and daughter were taken into federal custody and held in a San Antonio hotel before being placed on a deportation flight to Honduras. ICE instructed them not to disclose their location, according to the advocacy group Grassroots Leadership.

Local reporting said the deportation occurred less than a week after the arrest. Advocates emphasise the startling nature of a US-born child being removed from the country alongside a parent, particularly without prior notification to family members in the United States.

Advocates also alleged that efforts by immigration attorneys to intervene and seek legal counsel ahead of the deportation were thwarted because ICE officials were unable to locate the mother and daughter in internal databases. This inability to locate the child in agency systems complicated attempts to secure legal representation or raise objections before the removal took place.

Legal and Procedural Issues Surrounding the Deportation

Under US law, US citizens cannot be deported. A child born in the United States acquires citizenship at birth, and that status generally protects them from removal.

Federal immigration regulations and constitutional due process are designed to ensure that no citizen, regardless of age, is deported without the proper legal procedures and protections.

However, critics of federal enforcement say that administrative practices sometimes lead to children being removed from their parents without adequate notice or legal review.

Justice advocates point to similar cases in recent years where US-born children were reportedly deported alongside non-citizen parents. For example, in J.L.V. v. Acuna, a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in July 2025 on behalf of two families alleged that ICE unlawfully denied due process to mothers and their US-citizen children, including a five-year-old boy with stage-4 kidney cancer, before deporting them to Honduras.

The complaint argued ICE violated its own internal policies and federal law by detaining families in hotels, denying access to counsel, and issuing rapid deportations despite urgent legal filings by attorneys.

Civil liberties groups have also documented separate April 2025 incidents in Louisiana where toddlers and other US-citizen children were sent to Honduras along with their non-citizen parents during routine ICE check-ins, in at least one case prompting a federal judge to question whether appropriate process had been followed.

From a legal standpoint, court precedent establishes strong due-process protections for individuals in immigration proceedings, including the right to counsel and the right to be heard before an immigration judge, particularly when children are involved.

Community Response and Broader Immigration Policy Context

The deportation of a US-born minor has catalysed concern and calls for accountability from community organisations and immigrant rights advocates in Austin and beyond. Grassroots Leadership and allied groups labelled the deportation as emblematic of what they describe as an increasingly harsh immigration enforcement regime that fails to protect families and children in vulnerable positions.

In Austin, local activists have urged greater transparency from the Austin Police Department concerning its cooperation with ICE, especially under Texas's Senate Bill 4 (SB 4), which broadens local law enforcement's obligations to assist federal immigration agents.

Nationally, immigration enforcement has remained a polarising issue, with contrasting narratives about law enforcement and border integrity on one hand, and humanitarian and civil rights concerns on the other.

A child born on US soil, with all the rights that confer, should never be swept onto a deportation flight without a transparent and lawful process.

A Pattern of Enforcement Mistakes

The deportation of Génesis is not an isolated incident in the current enforcement climate. On 16 January 2026, ICE issued a rare apology for the 'mistake' of deporting 19-year-old Austin-raised college student Any López Belloza in violation of a court order.

These high-profile errors have led to calls for federal oversight, with the Children's Defence Fund and the ACLU demanding an end to hotel detentions and 'rushed' removals that fail to verify the citizenship status of minors.

Why the Case Matters

At the centre of the controversy is a fundamental legal principle: US citizenship is meant to provide absolute protection against deportation.

If a 5-year-old citizen can be removed from the country without notice, legal counsel, or judicial oversight, advocates warn, it exposes a dangerous gap between immigration law and enforcement practice.