A 2-year-old American girl has been left stateless after the Trump administration deported her alongside her family.
Emanuelly Borges Santos, known to her family as Manu, was born in a Florida hospital in 2022. She has an American passport and a Social Security card. Nevertheless, Manu and her parents, who are both undocumented, were packed onto a plane with 94 others and shipped to Brazil in February, according to a report from The Washington Post.
When they arrived, Brazilian officials were shocked to find the American toddler among the deportees.
“We’d never seen another case like this,” federal police officer Alexsandra Oliveira Medeiros Reis told the Post.
She is not stateless. She is an American citizen. Wrongly deported, yes. Stateless, no.
Hey now. How can media outlets manufacture consent if they don’t misrepresent her status?
Stateless in the sense of being exiled from her country
That’s not what “stateless” means.
OK. So what’s the word for “unable to return to your country of citizenship due to circumstances beyond your control and also unable to stay in the country you’re presently in due to only having a tourist visa”?
This is de facto statelessness
She’s still a de jure US citizen
That is, if a democratic (hopefully a progressive) president who respects the rule of law take power, they can come back.
If this were de jure revocation of citizenship, then even a democractic president can’t bring you back
Had her statehood wrongly, cruelly, illegally, willfully, and thoroughly ripped from her without due process.
But stateless… no.
Are you under the impression that statelessness would ever be something that was done rightfully, kindly, legally, etc?
This is what statelessness looks like. It is wrong, cruel, and illegal.
“Statelessness” is a state of being.
It is something that can be chosen. When chosen, yep, it’s “rightfully, kindly, legally, etc.” and that term applies.
When done to you, it is “wrong, cruel, and illegal” and some other term is more applicable. “Statelessness” is much too passive. 🤷♂️
Statelessness is also something that is inflicted on people. The UN talks about this stuff all the time.
How would you even choose it? I guess you could renounce all citizenship and then go live in a seastead or a colony on Mars, but it’s usually something that is done to people.
She’s been made stateless, which is by definition illegal. There’s international law against doing exactly this (not that the US cares right now).
She can come back across the border with her US Passport.
Getting that passport would be impossible tho. Ipso facto, she’s stateless.
I mean she’s kind of de-facto stateless at least until she is old enough or finds some other caregiver in the US. If she’s only a citizen of the US but can’t survive there then is there any difference between that and being stateless?
https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/about-statelessness/
The international legal definition of a stateless person is “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”. In simple terms, this means that a stateless person does not have the nationality of any country. Some people are born stateless, but others become stateless.
Yes, the experience she has right now, being a US citizen in Brazil, means that her current experience is surely quite similar to what it would be if she were stateless. And the path forward is definitely full of obstacles.
But she is not stateless. She is a US citizen with a US passport. Her situation is caused by her government illegally sending her to another country.
Right, I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, just pointing out it’s a bit of an academic distinction at this point.
But probably not the right way for the media to describe it, so I see your point.
It’s things like this where at times I wish there was a god and these people would actually have to stand in judgment and defend themselves
If there was a god, what kind of fucked up guy would he be?
I want y’all to suffer under evil people but I won’t intervene because I want you to struggle to test whether you believe in me. I want you to believe in me despite me giving no evidence I exist at all except some weird contradictory book written by a bunch of people who I supposedly did reveal myself to. But I won’t reveal myself to you because I made a bet with the other bad god who’s not god, just one of my minions who started his own spot. All because I love you more than anything. I care so much about your “free will” to deal with the misery I created to test your faith because I love you. It’s really important you blindly, faithfully love me back above all despite how I test you or I will give you to the other guy to torture you even worse forever.
What kind of demented abusive assed relationship would that be if god existed?
I picture God, if there is one, as a researcher who is doing some kind of research on the plants and animals in an Earth shaped petri dish. He may have intervened in ancient times until he got the initial parameters he wanted but now he’s just monitoring and taking notes. Someday he’ll finish up and kill everything and start the dissection phase.
Yup. IF God exists, he either doesn’t care for us at all, or is actively evil.
Similar to like if we created a swamp somewhere and there was bacteria growing in it. We’d give no fucks, or poison the bacteria by dumping toxic shit in it.
These people wouldn’t stand before God. They would immediately get a one way ticket to hell. As they did not allow due process in life, they will not get it in death.
Ironically and hypocritically many of them are devout Christians.
I saw somewhere recently trump still has a massive approval rating from evangelicals/protestants.
Devout isn’t the right word there. Saying they are devout means that they have a deep commitment to their faith. That is clearly not true. These people may claim to read their holy book, but they clearly don’t understand the slightest bit of it, well nothing in the new testament certainly. They love the old, first testament, fire-and-brimstone God that tells his followers to kill their enemies down to the last man, woman, or child. They have no interest in reading the woke Jesus stuff.
Ironically and hypocritically
“Predictably” would also fit here.
I don’t think hell would want them either they’d probably be given a bus ticket to the US.
she must be a gang member, right?
I won’t believe it until I see her arial font tats
All the cool kids are getting tatted in comic sans now. It’s how you know they’re hard core.
She’s brown, though, so why are we supposed to care? She’ll likely grow up to be a criminal or something, so it’s fine. Expedient, even.
If we take care of them at 2 years old, that’s less crime later. This is a good thing, if you really think about it.
And now I need to go take a shower just for typing that out loud.
There really is no good answer to the problem Trump has created here:
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Deport a US citizen because her parents are undocumented.
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Deport the parents and put the kid in
a cagefoster care, separating the family. -
Deny her birthright citizenship.
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Acknowledge that the parents are undocumented but allow them to stay because “anchor baby”.
Really what needs to happen is you give the parents a path to citizenship, but Trump would never allow that.
I see a fifth option. All US passports include this message:
The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.
So, since Marco Rubio is so concerned with all US citizens’ lawful aid and protection, someone should escort her back to the US, drop her off with her US passport at the Rubio house, and tell Marco that it’s his job to help her out. It says it right there!
I’ll be damned, it’s RIGHT THERE! How did I miss that?
It even says it in other languages, so people form shithole countries can read it too
I think “good answer” really depends on your values. If I hate people from or with heritage from South America or Africa or whatever other place, then it’s probably great that the government is illegally deporting citizens with that background. Unfortunately, that’s where a lot of people are. Admittedly, they’re also ok with denying birthright citizenship.
They should just buy a Trump citizenship card. /s
Your last is the solution. Reform immigration from the ground up.
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plane with 94 others and shipped to Brazil
She’s safer with her parents than being alone in the (now fascist) US, so it’s actually better this way. Anywhere that isn’t a US concentration camp or authoritarians running a camp on the US’s behalf, is a safer place to be.
She’s still a US citizen. In the future, after the US de-nazifies, she can still get a passport from the US embassy and come back.
They said they were going to do this. Someone asked what about the kids born in America and they answered they will be deported/sent with the parents. This is what you voted for protest non voters.
Thanks obama
That 2 Year Old girl was a CRIMINAL!
-People who voted for the Convicted Felon!
Deportation is a legal process. These people have not been deported because they have not gone through a legal process.
When she’s back… Let’s say it happens in 16 years… If trump is still around, he’s gonna regret that one pretty specifically. Hopefully the family is OK and can stay afloat.
