HARLINGEN, Texas (AP) — In an unexpected turn of events, a federal judge temporarily halted flights carrying children back to Guatemala, as legal representatives argued that the U.S. government was breaching American laws and endangering the youngsters by sending them into potentially dangerous situations.
This dramatic sequence unfolded in the early hours of a U.S. holiday weekend, stretching from runways in Texas to a courtroom in Washington, D.C. This situation marked a recent confrontation over the Trump administration’s stringent immigration policies and highlighted a significant clash between enforcement actions and the Congressional protections established for vulnerable migrants.
For now, hundreds of Guatemalan children who arrived unaccompanied will stay while the legal fight plays out over coming weeks.
“I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” stated Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, clarifying that her ruling specifically covered Guatemalan minors who entered the U.S. without parents or guardians.
Shortly after she ended an emergency hearing on Sunday afternoon, five charter buses arrived at a plane stationed at a border airport in Harlingen, Texas. Earlier, authorities had escorted dozens of individuals — potentially around 50 — toward the aircraft in a restricted airport section designated for government, including deportation flights. The passengers wore the distinct clothing from government shelters for migrant children.
The U.S. government asserts that it is in the process of reuniting the Guatemalan children with their parents or guardians who requested their return. However, lawyers for some of the children dispute this claim, insisting that authorities have bypassed a required legal procedure.
An attorney, Efrén C. Olivares from the National Immigration Law Center, mentioned one girl whose parents received an unexpected call weeks ago announcing her deportation from the U.S. Other children noted in court documents that they faced neglect, abandonment, physical threats, or abuse in Guatemala, identified only by their initials.
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.
Families scramble to Guatemalan air base
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, saying that 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 — living in the country.
Many of those from Guatemala request asylum or pursue other legal avenues to get permission to stay the U.S.
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.
The judge said that after being awakened at 2:30 a.m. to address the emergency filing from the children’s lawyers, she spent hours trying to reach federal attorneys and get answers.
“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 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.
Trump administration plans to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children
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.
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.
