The Trump administration had dozens of children loaded onto planes with plans to immediately remove them from the United States when a federal judge temporarily blocked the deportations.
In President Donald Trump’s latest push to execute the “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history, his administration planned to deport nearly 600 unaccompanied children, in some cases within hours, on Sunday to Guatemala.
As the president was playing golf, a rapid-fire legal battle played out Sunday, where federal Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the removals after the children’s attorneys argued that the deportations were violating several laws and could subject the children to “irreparable harm.”
The children were not given notice of their removals or a chance to contest them, their lawyers argued, noting they feared returning to Guatemala.
The government’s “actions are thus exposing children to multiple harms in returning them to a country where they fear persecution and by flouting their legal obligations to care for them in the United States,” the lawyers wrote.
Sooknanan initially ordered the sides to appear at a 3 p.m. hearing Sunday before moving it up to 12.30 p.m. after learning that some children were “in the process of being removed from the United States.”
“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 at the hearing, Politico reported.
The removals were part of the Trump administration’s “first of its kind pilot program” through an agreement with the Guatemalan government, lawyers at the National Immigration Law Center, who represent the children, wrote in a filing.
Guatemalan Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Martínez said Friday that the government confirmed it’s willing to receive hundreds of Guatemalan children who arrived unaccompanied in the U.S.
“The United States government is trying to facilitate the return of these children to their parents or guardians, from whom they have been separated,” Drew Ensign, a government attorney, argued at the hearing, according to the New York Times. The Guatemalan government had requested the children return home to be reunited with their families, he said.
Efrén Olivares, a lawyer representing the children, emphasized at least some of the children “have not requested to return,” he said. “They don’t want to return.”
The administration gave the children no notice of their imminent removals and, in some instances, it “simply removed minors’ pending cases from the immigration court docket in preparation for their summary removal,” the children’s attorneys wrote. Their departures must be approved by an immigration judge, they said.
The judge ordered the government to deplane all children and ensure they were put in custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement for the next 14 days while the legal battle plays out.
Before midnight, that process had been completed for all but one child, who would be placed in a resettlement program within the next few hours, Ensign said in a status report. The final child was returned to the resettlement program at around 1.30 a.m. Monday, Ensign said in an update.
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, slammed Sooknanan, a Joe Biden appointee, in a social media post: “The Biden judge is effectively kidnapping these migrant children and refusing to let them return home to their parents in their home country.”
The National Immigration Law Center attorneys filed a class action complaint on behalf of hundreds of Guatemalan children Sunday morning. The children fear returning to Guatemala, states the complaint, which identified 10 children aged 10 to 17 by their initials.
“By removing them before they have had the opportunity to present their fear-based claims, they are at risk of persecution, torture, or death,” their attorneys wrote.
Sookanan’s initial order only applied to the 10 children listed as plaintiffs; she later expanded the order to include all minors “not subject to an executable final order of removal.” She then required the government to file status reports to ensure the order was being carried out.
Lawyers for the children can file their motion for a preliminary injunction on Tuesday while government lawyers can file their opposition on Friday, the judge said.
