The White House claims that since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, his administration has deported more than 605,000 people. Now, if an order from a North Carolina judge is anything to go by, they’re not stopping at deporting the living.
As reported by The Guardian, on May 21, Judge Amy Lee ordered the removal of Levi Mendez-Maldonado, who arrived in the United States from Honduras as an unaccompanied minor at age 17. He was due in court that day for a preliminary hearing, but failed to appear.
Judge Lee made an order:
“Despite the written notification provided, Respondent failed to appear at the hearing, and no exceptional circumstances were shown for the failure to appear. Therefore, the immigration court conducted the hearing in absentia.”
There was only one tiny problem. Mendez-Maldonado was murdered on Nov. 30 2024, and is dead. Becca O’Neill, a lawyer with the Carolina Migrant Network, attended court to inform the judge of his death, presenting her with police records proving Mendez-Maldonado’s death and explaining that a death certificate had been filed in late 2024.
O’Neill then explained that the judge and federal prosecutor continued with the case without acknowledging that the person they were trying to deport had been dead for over a year. She said:
“The whole thing probably took maybe five minutes. The attorney acted like we were talking about the weather. The judge didn’t take a moment to reorient herself after hearing he was dead.”
“This is the banality of evil”
O’Neill didn’t contest the final order, but described the hearing and decision as “bizarre”:
“This is the banality of evil. All of this is so normalized and bizarre. Just a boilerplate order: he didn’t come to court, he didn’t demonstrate good cause. Well, he’s dead. And you know that because you saw a government website saying that he’s dead.”
Stefanía Arteaga, the founder and executive director of Carolina Migrant Network, summed it up: “It shows that even after death, you can’t escape deportation” and indicated this points towards the court trying to boost its deportation figures at all costs: “I just believe this is a numbers game. There’s an emphasis on results rather than fully understanding the scope of the situation.”
Charlotte news outlet Hoodline says O’Neill is planning to file additional paperwork to “clear the record for her client”, but the removal order remains in place. There has been no response from Judge Amy Lee or the North Carolina immigration courts, save for the written in absentia removal order itself. In any event, immigration judges generally do not comment publicly on individual cases.
Published: Jun 4, 2026 07:35 am