On Friday, a federal judge said he has a strong suspicion that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old US citizen to Honduras “with no meaningful process.”

The US citizen, named as “V.M.L” in the files, was initially held with her undocumented mother and sister during a regular immigration check-in in New Orleans earlier this week. According to court filings, after the 2-year-old’s father learnt that his family had been detained, his lawyer contacted immigration officials to inform them that V.M.L is a US citizen and cannot be deported.

“Around 7:30 p.m. the same day, V.M.L.’s father received a call from an ICE officer, who spoke with him for about a minute,” according to a court filing submitted by the father’s attorney. “The officer said that V.M.L.’s mother was there, and that they did not have much time to speak to each other and that they were going to deport his partner and daughters.”

According to the court petition, when the father contacted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, he was advised that while he could try to pick up V.M.L, he would also be detained.

On Thursday, an attorney for a family friend who had been granted temporary provisional custody of the child filed for a temporary restraining order, seeking that the 2-year-old be released immediately, claiming that her detention was causing irreparable injury.

In response to that motion, Justice Department lawyers stated that it was in the best interests of the minor to remain in legal custody of her mother and that she was not at “risk of irreparable harm because she is a U.S. citizen.”

“V.M.L. is not prohibited from entering the United States,” the DOJ lawyers wrote in the court filing.

According to court filings, the 2-year-old girl, her mother, and sister were deported to Honduras before the court responded to the habeas petition and a motion for temporary restraining order.

“That family filed a habeas corpus petition and motion for a temporary restraining order, which was never ruled on because of their rapid early-morning deportation,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.

According to the ACLU, the 2-year-old and two other US citizen children were removed from the US in a different instance “under deeply troubling circumstances that raise serious due process concerns.”

In his April 25 order, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty stated that he attempted to contact the 2-year-old’s mother by phone to determine whether she, in fact, wanted her child deported with her, as the government had claimed, but was told by government attorneys that this would not be possible because the mother had recently been released in Honduras.

Doughty ordered a hearing in the matter on May 16, stating that he was doing so “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government simply deported a US citizen without due process.”