US Court Steps In to Stop Deportation of Guatemalan Children

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To U.S. judge at least temporarily blocked the government Sunday from deporting a group of Guatemalan children who had crossed the border without their families, after their lawyers said the youngsters were loaded onto planes overnight and in violation of laws affording protections for migrant kids.

Attorneys for 10 Guatemalan minors, ages 10 to 17, said in court papers filed late Saturday that there were reports that plans were set to take off within hours for the Central American country. But a federal judge in Washington said those children couldn’t be deported for at least 14 days, and after a hastily scheduled hearing Sunday, she enforced that they needed to be taken off the plans and back to the Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities while the legal process plays out.

“I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” said Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who said her ruling applies broadly to Guatemalan minors who arrived in the U.S. without their parents or guardians.
Government lawyers, meanwhile, maintained that the children weren’t being deported but rather reunited at the request of their parents or guardians — a claim that the children’s lawyers dispute, at least in some cases.

Similar emergency requests were filed in other parts of the country as well. Attorneys in Arizona and Illinois asked federal judges there to block deportations of unaccompanied minors, underscoring how the fight over the government’s efforts has quickly spread.

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.