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.

  • Nougat
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    2821 days ago

    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.

    • @LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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      821 days ago

      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.