With flights scheduled to send dozens of Guatemalan children back to their home country, a federal court order on Sunday halted the removals. The ruling came after lawyers representing the minors argued that the government was breaking the law and putting them in serious danger.
The unusual events unfolded during the holiday weekend, stretching from airport runways in Texas to a Washington courtroom. It marked yet another dramatic clash between the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies and the legal protections that Congress established for children arriving at the border.
The decision ensures that Guatemalan youths who crossed the border without parents or guardians will remain in the U.S. for at least two more weeks while the case continues.
“I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” said U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan.
Not long after the emergency hearing, buses carrying migrant children pulled up to a charter plane at Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, which is commonly used for deportation flights. Witnesses reported seeing dozens of children in brightly colored clothing, the type usually worn at government-operated shelters.
The Justice Department confirmed in court papers that all 76 minors would be returned to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services before the end of the day Sunday.
“This idea that on a long weekend in the dead of night they would wake up these vulnerable children and put them on a plane irrespective of the constitutional protections that they had is something that should shock the conscience of all Americans,” said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, after the court session.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the ruling.
The rapid sequence of events brought to mind a similar episode in March, when hundreds of Venezuelans were deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador despite advocates pleading with a judge to intervene. In that instance, the government carried out the flights, arguing the judge’s order had come too late.
This time, the administration maintained that the effort was meant to reunite Guatemalan minors with family members who wanted them back. Attorneys for some of the children disputed that claim and said the government failed to follow legally required procedures.
One girl’s lawyer said her parents in Guatemala received a suspicious call weeks earlier, warning that she was being deported. The 16-year-old, currently staying at a shelter in New York, described herself as an honors student preparing to enter 11th grade, and said she is “deeply afraid of being deported.”
Other children, identified by initials in legal documents, described abandonment, abuse, and threats in Guatemala.
“I do not have any family in Guatemala that can take good care of me,” a 10-year-old child said in court papers. Another teen recounted experiencing “threats against my life” and added, “If I am sent back, I believe I will be in danger.”
While the main hearing took place in Washington, similar legal challenges were filed in other states.
In Arizona, a lawsuit from the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project noted that one of its clients, a 12-year-old asylum seeker with kidney disease, requires dialysis and will eventually need a transplant. Two other children named in that case, a boy of 10 and his 3-year-old sister, reportedly have no family to return to in Guatemala.
Meanwhile, relatives in Guatemala prepared for the expected arrivals. At an air base in Guatemala City, families gathered anxiously. Gilberto López said he drove through the night after a midnight call from his nephew, who told him he was being deported. The teen had left Guatemala at 15 and worked in the U.S. for two years before being detained.
In the U.S., migrant children who arrive alone are typically placed under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. They often live in group shelters or foster arrangements until a sponsor, usually a family member, can be found. Many Guatemalan youths apply for asylum or pursue other legal remedies to remain in the country.
Attorneys from the National Center for Youth Law reported that in recent weeks, Homeland Security Investigations agents had been questioning Guatemalan children at shelters, asking about relatives back home.
By Friday, advocates said they began hearing that children’s immigration hearings were being canceled.
According to Shaina Aber of the Acacia Center for Justice, advocates learned late Saturday that officials had compiled lists of minors scheduled for deportation, with flights planned out of Harlingen and El Paso.
Lawyer Efrén C. Olivares said two planes were waiting in Harlingen and one in El Paso, citing accounts from people on the ground. A government attorney later told the court that one plane may have taken off but then returned.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on X that Guatemala had asked for the children’s return and accused the judge of “refusing to let them reunify with their parents.”
Judge Sooknanan explained that she had been awakened at 2:30 a.m. by lawyers for the children, who warned in urgent filings that flights were only hours away. She said she spent much of the morning trying to contact government attorneys.
“I have the government attempting to remove unaccompanied minors from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising,” the judge remarked during Sunday’s hearing. She added: “Absent action by the courts, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to very dangerous situations.”
According to a letter from Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the administration is seeking to deport nearly 700 Guatemalan minors who crossed the border without parents.
Later Sunday, Guatemala’s government issued a statement noting that it had raised the issue with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during her July visit. Officials said their concern was that many of the youths would soon age out of juvenile facilities and be transferred to adult detention centers. The statement said Guatemala was ready to receive the minors once U.S. due process was completed and procedures were followed.
{Matzav.com}
