A two-year-old girl was detained by US immigration agents in Minneapolis and flown to a Texas detention facility with her father, despite a federal judge ordering her immediate release, before she was later returned to Minnesota and reunited with her mother, according to court records and the family’s lawyers.
The incident, reported by The Guardian, unfolded on Thursday afternoon when federal immigration agents stopped the child’s father, identified in court filings as Elvis Joel TE, as he was returning home from a nearby store with his daughter.
By the evening, a federal judge had ordered that the girl be released from custody by 9.30pm due to the “risk of irreparable harm.”
Instead, federal officials placed both the father and child on a flight bound for a Texas detention centre.
Irina Vaynerman, one of the family’s lawyers, told The Guardian late Friday that immigration authorities later flew both back to Minnesota.
The two-year-old was released into the custody of her mother, while the father remains detained in the state.
“The horror is truly unimaginable,” Vaynerman said. “The depravity of all of this is beyond words.”
Court filings and lawyers’ accounts describe a chaotic and traumatic sequence of events that unfolded within hours, prompting an urgent legal scramble to prevent the toddler from being separated from her family.
The detention came just two days after another high-profile case in Minnesota in which immigration authorities detained a five-year-old child, Liam Ramos, sparking international criticism and heightened scrutiny of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics in the region.
According to a court filing by Kira Kelley, another attorney for the family, immigration agents entered the family’s backyard and driveway around 1pm without a warrant as the father and child arrived home.
One agent allegedly broke the window of the father’s car while the toddler was still inside.
The child’s mother was at the door of the house and stepped inside as the agents approached, Kelley wrote.
Agents refused to allow the father to bring the girl to her mother or to other family members “waiting terrified inside the home”.
The father and daughter were then placed in an immigration agent’s vehicle, which, according to the filing, did not have a car seat.
Lawyers filed an emergency petition demanding the release of both the father and child, a move first reported by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
At around 8.10pm, a Minnesota-based federal judge issued an order prohibiting the government from transferring them outside the state.
A second order soon followed, directing that the girl be immediately released into the custody of Kelley, who had obtained permission from the mother to act as a temporary guardian for the purpose of retrieving the child.
In his ruling, the judge said the toddler’s release was necessary because of the “risk of irreparable harm”, adding that it was highly likely the underlying legal challenge would succeed.
“Needless to say, she has no criminal history,” the judge wrote.
Despite the court orders, the government placed both the father and daughter on a flight to Texas around 8.30pm, according to the family’s lawyers.
The father, who is originally from Ecuador, has a pending asylum application and no final order of removal, his attorneys said.
The girl has lived in Minneapolis since arriving in the United States as a newborn.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond directly to questions on Friday about why the father and child were transferred to Texas or how the agency complied with the judge’s orders.
