US Court to Review Deportation Efforts for Guatemalan Children

HARLINGEN, Texas — A federal judge has temporarily halted the deportation of a group of Guatemalan children who entered the U.S. unaccompanied by family, scheduling a hearing for Sunday. This action comes after lawyers argued that potential deportations would infringe on laws meant to protect migrant children.

Lawyers representing 10 Guatemalan minors, aged between 10 and 17, filed documents late Saturday stating there were rumors of imminent deportation flights to Central America. However, a judge in Washington ruled that the children could not be deported for at least 14 days unless a different decision was made at the impending online hearing on Sunday afternoon.

Similar urgent petitions were submitted in other states, including Arizona and Illinois, with legal teams requesting federal courts to prevent the deportation of unaccompanied minors. This highlights how quickly the debate over governmental actions is gaining traction across the nation.

This situation has raised concerns among immigrant rights supporters, who argue it may break federal rules intended to safeguard children arriving without parents. While deportations are currently on pause, the case highlights the intense conflict between government immigration policies and legal protections established by Congress for vulnerable migrants.

Sunday morning at an airport near the Texas border was noticeably busy. Buses loaded with migrants arrived at the airstrip while federal agents efficiently moved between the buses and planes. Security patrols encircled the area, and police and guards kept journalists at a distance from the perimeter fences. Planes, with engines running, stood ready for departure as ground staff completed final checks, indicating potential takeoffs while the legal proceedings continued far away in Washington.

Shaina Aber, from the Acacia Center for Justice, a group focused on immigrant legal defense, mentioned receiving notice Saturday evening about a draft list of Guatemalan children planned for deportation. The flights were reportedly planned to depart from Harlingen and El Paso, Texas, according to Aber.

She said she’d heard that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials “were still taking the children,” having not gotten any guidance about the court order.

The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

The Trump administration is planning to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children who came to the U.S. unaccompanied, according to a letter sent Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. The Guatemalan government has said it is ready to take them in.

It is another step in the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement efforts, which include plans to send a surge of officers to Chicago for an immigration crackdown, ramping up deportations and ending protections for people who have had permission to live and work in the United States.

Lawyers for the Guatemalan children said the U.S. government doesn’t have the authority to remove the youngsters and is depriving them of due process by preventing them from pursuing asylum claims or immigration relief. Many have active cases in immigration courts, according to the attorneys’ court filing in Washington.

Although the children are supposed to be in the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the government is “illegally transferring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or torture,” argues the filing by attorneys with the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights and the National Immigration Law Center.

An attorney with another advocacy group, the National Center for Youth Law, said the organization starting hearing a few weeks ago from legal service providers that Homeland Security Investigations agents were interviewing children — particularly from Guatemala — in Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities. HSI is ICE’s investigative arm.

The agents asked the children about their relatives in Guatemala, said the attorney, Becky Wolozin.

Then, on Friday, advocates across the country began getting word that their young clients’ immigration court hearings were being canceled, Wolozin said.

Migrant children traveling without their parents or guardians are handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement when they are encountered by officials along the U.S.-Mexico border. Once in the U.S., the children often live in government-supervised shelters or with foster care families until they can be released to a sponsor — usually a family member — living in the country.

The minors can request asylum, juvenile immigration status or visas for victims of sexual exploitation.

Due to their age and often traumatic experiences getting to the U.S., their treatment is one of the most sensitive issues in immigration. Advocacy groups already have sued to ask courts to halt new Trump administration vetting procedures for unaccompanied children, saying the changes are keeping families separated longer and are inhumane.

Guatemalan Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Martínez said Friday that the government has told the U.S. it is willing to receive hundreds of Guatemalan minors who arrived in the U.S. unaccompanied and are being held in government facilities.

Guatemala is particularly concerned about minors who could pass age limits for the children’s facilities and be sent to adult detention centers, he said.

President Bernardo Arévalo has said that his government has a moral and legal obligation to advocate for the children. His comments came days after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Guatemala.

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