After the U.S. government placed Guatemalan children on overnight flights back to their home country, a federal judge intervened to temporarily halt these flights while the children remained on board. Lawyers for the children argued that U.S. authorities were breaking the law and putting these vulnerable young individuals in potential danger.

This dramatic incident unfolded during the early hours of a holiday weekend, moving swiftly from Texas airport tarmacs to a courtroom in Washington. It marked another confrontation over the Trump administration’s stringent immigration policies, highlighting the ongoing conflict between enforcement of these policies and the legal protections established for at-risk migrants by Congress.

For now, hundreds of Guatemalan children who arrived unaccompanied will stay while the legal fight plays out over coming weeks.

Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan was clear in her ruling, emphasizing it applied to Guatemalan minors who entered the U.S. without their parents or guardians.

Shortly after the emergency hearing called on Sunday afternoon, five charter buses arrived at a plane located at an airport near the border in Harlingen, Texas. Earlier, authorities had escorted around 50 individuals toward this plane in a restricted area of the airport reserved for government aircraft, including deportation flights. The children were dressed in the colored clothing typically associated with shelters for migrant youth.

The U.S. government maintains that they are reuniting these Guatemalan children with their parents or guardians at the request of Guatemala. However, attorneys representing some of the children dispute this claim, arguing that, irrespective of the reason, authorities failed to adhere to the required legal procedures.

One girl recounted how her parents received a puzzling phone call a few weeks prior, notifying them of her impending deportation, according to attorney Efrén C. Olivares from the National Immigration Law Center.

The 16-year-old, who’s been living in a New York shelter, said in a court filing that she’s an honors student about to start 11th grade, loves living in the U.S. and is “deeply afraid of being deported.”

Other children — identified only by their initials — said in court documents that they had been neglected, abandoned, physically threatened or abused in their home country.

“I do not have any family in Guatemala that can take good care of me,” a 10-year-old said in a court filing. A 16-year-old recalled experiencing “threats against my life” in Guatemala.

“If I am sent back, I believe I will be in danger,” the teen added.

Sunday’s court hearing came in a case filed in federal court in Washington, but similar legal actions also were filed elsewhere.

In a lawsuit in Arizona, the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project said one of its clients is a 12-year-old asylum-seeker who has chronic kidney disease, needs dialysis to stay alive and will need a kidney transplant. Two other plaintiffs, a 10-year-old boy and his 3-year-old sister, don’t have family in Guatemala and don’t want to return, according to the group.

As the developments played out in the U.S., families gathered at an air base in Guatemala’s capital, Guatemala City, in anticipation of the flights. Gilberto López said he drove through the night from his remote town after his 17-year-old nephew called at midnight to say he was being deported from Texas.

The boy left Guatemala two years ago, at age 15, to work in the U.S. and was detained about a month ago, López said.

Alarm bells for immigrant advocates

Migrant children who arrive in the U.S. without their parents or guardians are routinely handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. They often live in government-supervised shelters or with foster care families until they can be released to a sponsor — usually a relative — in the U.S.

Many of those from Guatemala request asylum or pursue other legal avenues to get permission to stay.

An attorney with 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 Guatemalans — in facilities of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

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

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

Shaina Aber of Acacia Center for Justice, an immigrant legal defense group, said it was notified Saturday evening that officials had drafted a list of children to return to Guatemala. Advocates learned that the flights would leave from the Texas cities of Harlingen and El Paso, Aber said.

It’s unclear whether any planes actually departed. Government lawyer Drew Ensign told the Washington judge that one plane might have taken off but then returned.

The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and HHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on X that the Guatemalan government formally requested the children’s return and that the judge was “refusing to let them reunify with their parents.”

Judge got a 2:30 a.m. call

The judge said she was awakened at 2:30 a.m. to address the emergency filing from the children’s lawyers, who wrote in bold type that flights might be leaving within the ensuing two to four hours. Sooknanan spent hours trying to reach federal attorneys and get answers, she said.

“I have the government attempting to remove unaccompanied minors from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising,” Sooknanan said at the midday hearing, later adding: “Absent action by the courts, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to very dangerous situations.”

The rapid-fire developments resembled a March weekend showdown over the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Advocates implored a federal judge to halt deportations they believed were imminent, while the Trump administration was mum about its plans.

That judge appeared in civilian clothes for a Saturday night hearing and tried to block the flights, but they went ahead, with the government saying the order came too late.

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, an Oregon Democrat. The Guatemalan government has said it’s ready to take them in.

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Santana reported from Washington and Peltz from New York. Associated Press writers Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed.