A US district judge ordered the Trump administration to refrain from deporting hundreds of unaccompanied immigrant children to Guatemala.
Federal judge blocks deportation flights for immigrant children
A federal judge temporarily blocked the deportation of hundreds of accompanist immigrant children from Guatemala for at least two weeks.
Fox – Seattle
A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration could not transfer money to Guatemala.
Trump’s appointee, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, District of Columbia, held that their deportation was likely to violate the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), a law enacted in 2008 to address concerns about unaccompanied immigrant children in government detention. Kelly said the administration’s debate to deport children, including parents’ demands for return, “it collapsed like a card house after about a week.”
“There is no evidence before the court that the parents of these children asked for return,” Kelly wrote in a 43-page order. “And no one there wanted their kids to come back to Guatemala.”
Kelly pointed to a report prepared by the Guatemala Lawyer General’s Office. This said the authorities were unable to track parents for most children and successful people were not requesting their return.
The Guatemalan document was first reported by Reuters on September 3rd.
Deportation on late-night holidays
The Trump administration attempted to deport 76 unaccompanied minors on Sunday, August 31st. The administration claimed that the Central American country and its families had requested that the children be returned.
Aaron Reichlin Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Council of Immigration, said the late-night deportation effort marked another attempt to deny the legitimate process of immigration.
“What Judge Kelly’s decision makes is that what the Trump administration was doing was illegal and their justification was wrong,” Reichlin Melnick said. “This wasn’t about reunion of children and parents. It was about deportation. This is another case of the Trump administration engaged in extraordinary actions to avoid judicial review.”
The child is between 10 and 17 years old, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.
After the National Center for Immigration Law received an emergency request filed to stop deportation, immigration and customs enforcement agencies were prevented from leaving by U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Souknanan.
The plane sat at Tarmax in El Paso and Harlingen, Texas, as a judge reviewed the case and determined that the administration could not banish the children. The children were taken off the plane an hour after the sentencing and returned to protections at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The El Paso Times, part of the USA Today network, were present when the children disembarked from the GlobalX plane.
Who is considered an “unaccompanied minor”?
According to federal law, immigrant children who arrive at the US-Mexican border without a parent or guardian are classified as unaccompanied. They are then taken to a federally run shelter and waited until they can be placed with their family and foster parents.
Guatemalan immigration experts celebrated the court’s decision.
“I think it was the right action under national and international laws to stop the deportation of unaccompanied immigrant children,” said Ursula Roldan, an immigration researcher at Rafael Landiber University in Guatemala. “These children are not protected by the country they come from. I think the law should win, just like the principles of human rights at the international level.”
Jeff Abbott covers the borders of the El Paso Times and can reach:jdabbott@gannett.com; @palabrasdeabajo on Twitter Or @wordsdeabajo.bsky.social on bluesky.
