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Immigrant rights legal professionals requested a federal choose in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to dam the Trump administration from deporting lots of of Guatemalan minors, arguing they may face neglect or persecution at dwelling.
The migrants’ attorneys mentioned their purchasers, who ranged from 10 to 17 years outdated, had been at imminent threat of elimination regardless of some having pending asylum instances or different authorized claims that had not absolutely been vetted by the courts.
The attorneys mentioned trafficking and immigration legal guidelines “forestall unaccompanied kids from being whisked off beneath cowl of darkness on the whim of any authorities.” The minors in query are at the moment in Well being and Human Providers custody and don’t have any authorized guardians in the US, the attorneys mentioned.
BIDEN JUDGE HALTS ‘SURPRISING’ ILLEGAL ALIEN MINOR REPATRIATION PLAN AFTER ADVOCACY GROUPS SUE
An indication is displayed outdoors of the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers headquarters on the Hubert H. Humphrey Constructing on June 2, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Kevin Carter/Getty Photos)
The migrants’ authorized crew is now in search of a longer-term injunction to switch Decide Sparkle Sooknanan’s emergency order over the vacation weekend blocking the deportations for as much as two weeks. Sooknanan granted the order after studying that greater than six dozen of the minors had been transferred from HHS to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in a single day and positioned on a airplane certain for Guatemala.
The case has drawn consideration each as a result of it entails what legal professionals say might be about 600 minors susceptible to being abruptly faraway from the nation and since Sooknanan, the choose initially presiding over the case, imposed a direct restraining order on the Trump administration to halt the removals.
Sooknanan’s order got here after a separate choose in D.C. gave a controversial oral order in March to return alleged Tren de Aragua gang members to the US, which the Trump administration argued was ambiguous and never binding. In search of to keep away from such a dispute, Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, left no room for interpretation.
Sooknanan gave fast, unequivocal orders over Labor Day weekend to deplane the minors and return them to the HHS Workplace of Refugee Resettlement. The choose demanded standing updates from the Division of Justice each few hours till the method was full. The DOJ complied along with her orders.
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Guatemalan kids had been transferred into the custody of ICE over Labor Day weekend. (Getty Photos)
The lawsuit was introduced by ten underage Guatemalan migrants who had been dwelling within the nation and not using a guardian or documentation. Their attorneys described them in court docket papers as “weak kids” entitled to “enhanced safety and care.” The attorneys mentioned the Trump administration was blowing previous legal guidelines and the Structure in an effort to illegally deport them.
Sooknanan granted a category motion lawsuit in order that the case would cowl not simply the ten plaintiffs however all different minors equally located within the custody of HHS.
After Labor Day, the case was reassigned to Decide Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee. Kelly has set a listening to for subsequent week over the migrants’ new request for a preliminary injunction.
The migrants’ attorneys mentioned that they had discovered from media experiences that ICE was planning to “imminently” deport them to Guatemala, the place they “might face abuse, neglect, persecution, and even torture.”
A girl reveals a cellphone to a Guatemalan migrant deported from the US inside a bus after his arrival on the Guatemalan Air Pressure Base in Guatemala Metropolis on August 31, 2025. (JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP through Getty Photos)
Federal authorities “woke kids within the evening and subjected them to the trauma of imminent elimination,” the attorneys wrote in court docket papers.
“However for this Court docket’s intervention whereas the airplane sat on the tarmac in Texas, these kids would have been expelled to Guatemala,” they mentioned.
A DOJ lawyer instructed the choose through the last-minute hearings over the weekend that the Guatemalan authorities had requested the return of the migrant youths and that “all of those kids have their dad and mom or guardians in Guatemala who’re requesting their return.”
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A Division of Homeland Safety spokeswoman known as the preliminary momentary restraining order from the choose “disgusting,” contending that the DHS was merely aiming to reconnect the younger migrants with their dad and mom.
“Decide Sparkle [Sooknanan] is obstructing flights to *reunify* Guatemalan kids with their households,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin wrote. “Now these kids need to go to shelters. That is disgusting and immoral.”
