We're already significantly short on judges. Requiring judges in triplicate would have some crazy side effects. Court cases currently take too long to resolve due to the shortage. The entire system would grind to a literal standstill.

Instead of teaching the subject in class and then assign practice for home, we should be learn the subject at home and so the practice in class.

Then you get students who get mad because they're "teaching themselves". Not realizing at all that the teacher curated what they're reading/doing and is an SME that's available to them when they're completely lost.

I currently live in the US... so it's not directly come up for me. But it's something I've been looking into here and there because I am interested in buying property and working in my other country. Part of that is driven by my desire to interact with the majority of my family more.

My understanding is that there are firms that do it. It's the same process as most other taxes though except you can claim a couple other forms and need to declare a few additional items. I tend to do my own taxes now and get by just fine, a couple extra forms I'd likely just hire a firm to do them 1 or 2 times and use that as reference for the future personally. Taxes in general is pretty easy for most people as long as you have a reference/guide and don't do weird stuff IMO.

For renouncement I think you only have to show that you've filed taxes for the past 5 years... and as long as you're not some uber wealthy person there isn't an expat cost (I think it's like 800k on all assets? or something like that). The fee was something like $2k as well. It's not a crazy hard process to my understanding, but I could be missing a part.

This isn't quite true. You pay the difference of whatever local tax would cover. And foreign earned income exclusion is massive...(https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion)... So even if you make 200k, you can exclude ~120k of it, and then the remaining 80k would have your local taxes deducted from it as well. You end up finding out that most people pay virtually nothing.

And if you don't intend on returning to the USA at all, there's not a lot of enforcement that can happen. The worst effect is that you can't renew your passport at a consulate from what I've seen.

I'm a dual citizen so I end up researching these weird topics a lot...

There are. You have to apply for them. Which it's also entirely possible that the mother is currently doing.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.210781/gov.uscourts.lawd.210781.1.0.pdf
and
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.210781/gov.uscourts.lawd.210781.6.0_3.pdf

Indeed. If you read the actual response... no deportation occurred for the 2 year old.

From the petitioner's council:

The officer overheard and said that V.M.L. would not be deported and explained that V.M.L.’s mother and sister had deportation orders.

From ICE:

Should her mother decide to allow Petitioner Mack and the purported father to take custody of V.M.L., V.M.L. is not prohibited from entering the United States.

The claim is that the father didn't identify himself (likely because of his own immigration status), so they couldn't release child to him. Since he didn't want to identify himself, any claim that the mother wanted to take the child with her must be held, no "friend" can take custody at that point. The only identified parent isn't consenting.

It looks like there was an exhibit referenced in the ICE response document. That exhibit is likely the letter they reference that the mother wrote.

It's a shit situation... It's not good in the slightest, but it isn't "American Citizen deported".

Mother can easily state that she would like to give custody to the petitioning "friend" and V.M.L. can return.