A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s plans to send unaccompanied Guatemalan children back to their home country, writing that the government’s insistence that it came at parents’ request “crumbled like a house of cards.”
Immigration lawyers raced to court in the middle of the night as the administration took steps to swiftly send back a group of Guatemalan migrant children over Labor Day weekend.
The federal judge on emergency duty temporarily halted the deportations. The case was then assigned permanently to U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, whose new ruling Thursday indefinitely blocks the deportations as the case moves forward.
Nominated to the bench by Trump, Kelly said his administration’s plans likely violate the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), a 2008 law that sought to address concerns about unaccompanied migrant children in the government’s custody.
“While Defendants plunged ahead in the middle of the night with their ‘reunification’ plan and then represented to a judge that a parent or guardian had requested each child’s return, that turned out not to be true,” Kelly wrote.
“Such a rushed, seemingly error-laden operation to send unaccompanied alien children back to their home countries is one of the things that the TVPRA’s process prevents,” he continued.
The Hill has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
In court, the administration contended the deportations would be lawful and judge had no authority to intervene.
“This case is uncomplicated, both legally and morally: where possible, unaccompanied alien children should be reunited with their parents or guardians. Their continued separation is a tragedy to be cured, not prolonged as Plaintiffs request classwide, regardless of a specific child’s best interest,” the Justice Department wrote in court filings.
The suit was filed by 10 Guatemalan unaccompanied minors aged 10 to 17 facing deportation sued alongside the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. They are represented by the National Immigration Law Center.
Kelly’s order blocks the administration from deporting the children or any other unaccompanied Guatemalan minor who has received neither a final removal order nor permission from the Attorney General to voluntarily depart from the United States.
Though a loss for the administration, the order is narrower than plaintiffs’ ask. Their proposal would’ve covered unaccompanied minors facing deportation from all other countries except Canada or Mexico, which are treated differently under the TVPRA.
“There may be a better policy solution to this difficult, complex issue than what law requires,” Kelly wrote. “But a ‘policy disagreement with Congress,’ of course, is no license for the Executive ‘to ignore statutory mandates.’”