January 11, 2026
ICE deports 5-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras along with her mother
Austin kindergartner deported after police called ICE on mother
🛂Immigration📜Constitutional Law✊Civil Rights
Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos, a 5-year-old girl born in Austin, Texas, was deported to Honduras on Jan. 11, 2026. She is a U.S. citizen. Under the Constitution, U.S. citizens cannot be deported. Génesis was in kindergarten and had never been to Honduras.
Austin police responded to a 911 disturbance call at 4:35 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2026, in West Oak Hill. They found no ongoing disturbance or injured individuals. Officers ran a background check and discovered an administrative ICE warrant for Karen Gutiérrez Castellanos, the mother.
Austin police called ICE under its Detainer Request policy. ICE agents arrived and took both the mother and her U.S. citizen daughter into federal custody. Austin police maintain they don't "proactively engage in immigration enforcement initiatives" but did notify ICE of the warrant.
ICE held Karen and Génesis in a San Antonio hotel for six days before deportation. Karen was instructed not to share their location with anyone. The family in Austin didn't know where they were for days. An immigration attorney tried to intervene but couldn't locate them.
Karen came to the United States in 2018 and applied for protections as a survivor of domestic violence. ICE was acting on a deportation order issued in 2019, a year before Génesis was born. The deportation order predated the child's existence.
Advocacy group Grassroots Leadership reported Karen called relatives from Honduras on Jan. 11 to say they had been deported. Neither mother nor daughter appeared in ICE's online locator system during detention. The family called the situation "devastating" and said they were "separated by an immigrant system bent on ripping families apart."
This case is not isolated. In J.L.V. v. Acuna, a Jul. 2025 lawsuit alleged ICE deported other U.S. citizen children with their parents, including a 5-year-old boy with stage-4 kidney cancer. Civil liberties groups documented similar incidents in Louisiana in Apr. 2025.
The Children's Defense Fund and ACLU are calling for federal oversight and an end to hotel detentions and "rushed" removals that fail to verify citizenship status of minors. Austin Police Chief Robin Henderson said on Jan. 15 she plans to update APD policy to clarify officers' role in ICE cases.
🛂Immigration📜Constitutional Law✊Civil Rights
People, bills, and sources
Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos
U.S. Citizen Child
Karen Guadalupe Gutiérrez Castellanos
Mother
Robin Henderson
Austin Police Chief
What you can do
1
civic action
Contact Austin city officials about police-ICE cooperation
Austin passed a Freedom City resolution in 2018 to limit police cooperation with ICE. Ask city leaders to enforce it and ensure policing resources aren't used for immigration enforcement.
2
understanding
Understand the difference between criminal and administrative warrants
Police found an administrative ICE warrant, not a criminal warrant. Administrative warrants don't have the same legal weight. Local police aren't required to enforce them in most cases.
3
civic action
Support legal aid for affected families
Organizations like Grassroots Leadership and the Children's Defense Fund provide legal assistance to families affected by deportations. Support their work or connect affected families to resources.