31 August (UPI) — Advocates cautioned that flights carrying the minors were already getting ready to take off, and on Sunday, a federal judge in Washington temporarily stopped the Trump administration from deporting a group of Guatemalan children in U.S. custody.
According to court documents, the case was brought on behalf of ten unaccompanied minors from Guatemala, ages 10 to 17, who are still living in foster care and government shelters throughout the nation.
The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, which supports the children, requested that the court stop what it described as an illegal plan to summarily deport hundreds of Guatemalan minors in spite of ongoing immigration proceedings and legal protections provided by federal law.
According to court documents, as part of a pilot program negotiated with Guatemala, the administration designated over 600 children for removal.
Within hours of the complaint being filed, the Young Centre claimed that officials had begun moving children from the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to board deportation flights.
Senior officials from several agencies are named in the lawsuit, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
According to the Young Center, the mass removals violate the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, which mandates that before being removed, unaccompanied minors from non-contiguous nations such as Guatemala must be given access to legal representation, full immigration court hearings, and safe repatriation procedures.
In sworn declarations, a number of the children described their fears of going back to Guatemala, citing persecution, gang violence, abuse, and neglect.
In custody, a 16-year-old girl with a 10-month-old daughter reported being abused by both her father and the child’s father. Another said she wanted to keep fighting her case in U.S. immigration court while she awaited an asylum interview.
The children’s motion for a temporary restraining order was granted by U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan in an emergency order shortly after 4 a.m. on Sunday.
She determined that the lawsuit’s “exigent circumstances” required prompt action to “maintain the status quo” and prohibited the government from expelling the plaintiffs for a period of two weeks.
According to documents, Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, originally planned an emergency hearing for Sunday at approximately 3 p.m. but changed it to 12:30 p.m. after discovering removals were already in progress.
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She expanded the protection of the restraining order during the midday hearing to include all Guatemalan unaccompanied minors detained by the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the time the complaint was filed, provided that they were not already subject to a final order of removal.
According to her, the relief was required to avoid “irreparable harm.” She listened to arguments regarding the case’s eligibility for class action certification during the hearing. Class certification has not yet been decided.
According to Politico, Sooknanan stated during the hearing, “It is surprising that the government is trying to remove minor children from the country in the early hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, but here we are.”
Unless the court gives further instructions, Sooknanan ordered the government to stop any attempts to transfer, repatriate, or otherwise remove the children covered by the suit until at least mid-September.
