WASHINGTON _ The 16-year-old girl sat alone in the hotel room, under guard, unable to leave, unable to call anyone. She didn't know where she was, or even what state she was in; all she knew was that she was going to be deported in a few hours to Guatemala, the country she'd fled.
Unknown to her, as she sat Friday in a hotel in Alexandria, La., lawyers across the country and siblings in the United States who'd applied to sponsor her had launched frantic efforts to stop the teenager's removal from the U.S.
Less than an hour before the girl's scheduled deportation, two things happened, according to A'Kiesha Soliman, the lawyer who originally represented her as she was held in a government-contracted shelter in El Paso, Texas. Soliman and other lawyers described the case to the Los Angeles Times on condition of maintaining the girl's anonymity as a minor:
A judge in Louisiana denied the request by the teen's lawyers to put a hold on her deportation, rejecting their argument that the government had violated her rights and subjected her to "significantly heightened risk" of contracting the coronavirus.
Almost simultaneously, the Guatemalan government put a brief moratorium on deportations from the U.S., forcing the Trump administration to cancel the Friday flight.
Without explanation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials then transferred the teen from Louisiana back to Texas, where she'd crossed the border in March.
On Saturday, when her lawyers were finally able to locate and reach her, she couldn't tell them where she was, and security wouldn't provide the name of the hotel, Soliman said.
"This child has been moved from city to city and hotel to hotel," Soliman said. "And each time has resulted in communication being completely cut off with her legal counsel."
Under the cover of the coronavirus, Trump officials are targeting unaccompanied migrant minors for deportation even as lawyers fight to force their release to relatives in the U.S. who have applied to sponsor them, advocates across the country say.
The Guatemalan girl's case illustrates how the system often leaves children alone to bear the brunt of the unpredictable swings of fate in their cases.
Though the roughly 1,600 migrant children in the government's custody have special protections under U.S. law and a long-standing court settlement, officials often yank children back and forth through the immigration detention system _ now rife with the virus _ in pursuit of the administration's goal of barring them from staying in the United States.
Mark Weber, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which houses the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which Congress charged with the care and placement of unaccompanied migrant minors, said the agency doesn't comment on individual cases "because of privacy and safety issues."
He noted that decisions on deportation are up to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "ORR does not determine who is removed or deported," Weber said in a statement.
ICE, which both detains and deports migrants, did not provide comment.
The girl's 22-year-old brother, who had applied to sponsor her, says he feels helpless. Santos, who asked to be identified only by his first name because he is undocumented, has lived in North Carolina for three years since fleeing gang violence in their hometown of Chiquimula in southeastern Guatemala, he said.
"I didn't know what to do," he said Sunday of hearing his sister would be deported instead of released to live with him.
"We're very afraid for her to go back alone," he said, speaking in a mix of English and Spanish. "It's very difficult for us and for her, especially for her."
