A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to send hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children in the U.S. to Guatemala after lawyers for the children made a pre-dawn emergency appeal for 10 of the minors, who were already boarded on airplanes.
Shortly after 1 a.m. ET on Sunday, the advocacy group National Immigration Law Center filed a class action lawsuit along with its emergency appeal to halt the deportation of the children already on planes, writing in its complaint that it had “learned that flights are reportedly scheduled to depart the United States within the next 2 to 4 hours” and that the administration was “illegally transferring them to Immigration Customs Enforcenent (ICE) custody to put them on flights to Guatemala.”
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan had temporarily blocked the administration from deporting the children, and initially set an emergency hearing for 3 p.m. on Sunday, but moved the hearing earlier to 12:30 p.m. after being notified the Guatemalan children were “in the process of being removed from the U.S.”
“I have the government attempting to remove minor children from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising, but here we are,” Sooknanan said, via Politico.
“I have conflicting narratives from both sides here,” she said, noting that what she was hearing from the advocates for the children “doesn’t quite line up with what I’m getting from the government.”
Sooknanan issued a temporary restraining order to halt the removal of the 10 children, ages 10-17, for 14 days. The judge expanded the order to cover any Guatemalan unaccompanied minors in the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. According to the complaint, these minors could number in the hundreds.
A government lawyer told Reuters on Sunday evening that the children that it had planned to fly to Guatemala were removed from the airplanes and were being placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
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“In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala,” Efrén C. Olivares, Vice President of Litigation and Legal Strategy at the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement. “We are heartened the Court prevented this injustice from occurring before hundreds of children suffered irreparable harm. We are determined to continue fighting to protect the interest of our plaintiffs and all class members until the effort is enjoined permanently.”
In February, President Donald Trump issued an internal government memo ordering immigration agents to find and deport thousands of undocumented immigrant children who came to the U.S. without their parents, Reuters reported.
On Friday, CNN reported that the Trump administration had identified more than 600 children from Guatemala in the custody of the Health and Human Services Department to potentially deport as part of an agreement with Guatemala. Three sources told Reuters the plan was to start deportations this weekend. In July, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo said his government was working together with the U.S. to repatriate unaccompanied children.
Per the Justice Department’s Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew C. Ensign, 76 of the unaccompanied children were expected to be returned to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement by 10:30 p.m., with 16 of them having already been returned.
From Rolling Stone US
