The judge blocks the deportation of Guatemalan migrant children while flights were ready to take off

A federal judge blocked Sunday to send any migrant child not accompanied to Guatemala unless they have a deportation order, only a few hours after the lawyers alerted her to what they described as an effort of the hurried government to deport hundreds of children.

The judge of the United States District Court, Sparkle Sooknan, issued his order since the deportation effort was completely running, with airplanes with migrant children on board ready to take off from Texas.

On early Sunday, at night, Sooknan issued a temporary restriction order that prohibits officials from sending a group of 10 Migrant children Between the ages of 10 and 17 years to Guatemala, granting a request from the lawyers who alleged that the effort would transfer the legal protections that Congress established for these minors. He also scheduled a audience in the afternoon to weigh the next steps of the case.

But Sooknanan abruptly uploaded the earlier audience on Sunday, saying that he had been alerted that some migrant children were already in the process of being deported.

As this audience launched, Sooknan announced that it had just issued a broader temporal restriction order that blocks any deportation of children not accompanied by Guatemala and under custody of the United States that did not have a deportation order. She instructed Drew Ensign, the lawyer of the Department of Justice that represents the Trump administration, to quickly inform the officials who had to stop their deportation plans.

The Recoled Deportation Airplanes had been prepared to take off on Sunday, but said that everyone was “on the ground” and even on American soil. He said he believed that a plane had taken off before, but had returned.

At the request of Sooknan, Ensign said he confirmed that children in the airplanes would be exhausted and returned to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for caring for migrant minors entering the US. UU. Without authorization and without their parents or legal guardians.

The Department of Justice said that 76 unaccompanied children were sent to Guatemala on Sunday before the effort was blocked. Of these, 16 had been returned to the custody of HHS from Sunday night and the rest was expected to be in HHS Care at 10:30 pm

The HHS houses unaccompanied children in shelters or parenting homes until they turn 18 or until they can be placed with an adequate sponsor in the United States, who are often family members.

Sooknan admitted its temporary restriction order, which will last 14 days, is “extraordinary”, but justified it with the argument that the Government had decided to “execute a plan to eliminate these children” in the “early hours of the morning” of a holiday.

In their lawsuit, the lawyers of the Guatemalan children group said that the Trump administration had launched an effort to deport more than 600 migrants to Guatemala without allowing them to request humanitarian protection, despite the fact that US law protects them from rapid deportations. They alleged that children could face abuse, negligence or persecution if they are returned to Guatemala.

Ensign, the lawyer of the Department of Justice, said that the Trump administration was not trying to formally deport Guatemalan children under the United States Immigration Law, but that it repatriated Guatemala so that they could meet with relatives there. He said that the Guatemalan government and the relatives of the children had requested the reunifications.

But the children’s lawyers disputed government claims, citing a case in which they say that a child’s parents did not request any repatriation. They also said that a law known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Reautorization Law says that unaccompanied migrant children who are not from Mexico must be able to see an immigration judge and request legal protections before any deportation effort. Some of the children who face the return to Guatemala still have pending immigration cases, lawyers said.

Ensign said that the legal position of the government is that it can “repatriate” these children, based on an authority granted to HHS to gather “alien children not accompanied with a father abroad in appropriate cases.”

The representatives of the Department of National Security did not respond immediately to a request for comments on deportation plans.

Neha Desai, lawyer of the National Youth Law Center based in California who works with migrants, said that the United States government tried to deport children with “claims already presented by legal relief based on abuse and persecution they experienced in their country of origin.”

“This is illegal and deeply inhuman,” Dested Desai.

The majority of unaccompanied children cross the southern border of the United States without legal permission come from Central America and tend to be teenagers. Once in the United States, many asylum files or other immigration benefits to try to legally remain in the country, such as a visa for abused, abandoned or careless young people.

As part of its major offensive against illegal immigration, the Trump administration has tried to make drastic changes in how US processes do not accompany children. It has made it more difficult for some relatives, including those of the country illegally, sponsoring children not accompanied by government custody and offered some adolescents the option to voluntarily return to their native countries.

The Trump administration has also ordered the agents of the application of immigration and customs (ICE) and other agencies to carry out “well -being controls” in children released from HHS custody, a measure that it has said is in response to statements in dispute that the administration Biden “lost” hundreds of thousands of migrant minors.

There are currently approximately 2,000 migrant children in HHS care.