District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued an emergency decree following a petition from the National Immigration Law Center concerning 10 children aged between 10 and 17.
After initially preventing the deportation of this group, Sooknanan, who is based in Washington, DC, expanded the order to include all Guatemalan children who had reached the US without a parent or guardian. Sooknanan also moved a hearing on the issue to Sunday due to reports that some of the children were in the process of being removed from the country during the US Labor Day holiday weekend. “I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” the judge stated, noting that her decision applied broadly to unaccompanied Guatemalan minors.
Trump Administration’s Response and Legal Challenges
Speaking from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said it was “almost certain that the Trump administration will take this to a higher court very quickly—possibly first thing on Monday.” Fisher added that the US government would be keen to start repatriation flights as soon as possible.
The legal activity on Sunday came days after reports in the US media that the Trump administration was preparing to begin child deportations to Guatemala this weekend, following an agreement with the Central American country.
According to the National Immigration Law Center’s legal challenge, such a move would be a “clear violation of the unambiguous protections that Congress has provided them as vulnerable children.” The complaint further stated that while the children should be under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the US government was intent on “illegally transferring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or torture.”
Background on Trump’s Immigration Policies
On Friday, Guatemala’s Foreign Minister Carlos Martinez confirmed that his country was willing to receive hundreds of children who were in the US. Since the start of his second presidential term in January, Trump has attempted to begin the mass deportation of refugees and immigrants. However, his administration’s anti-immigration actions, which have included sending hundreds of people to a notorious prison in El Salvador, have been met with legal difficulties.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the most high-profile face of the Trump administration’s crackdown and a Salvadoran man legally residing in Maryland, was mistakenly deported in March. According to his lawyers, he was “severely beaten and subjected to psychological torture” in prison there. Abrego Garcia now wishes to seek asylum in the US. His lawyers recently told a judge that he fears further persecution and torture if the Trump administration succeeds in deporting him to Uganda, as it plans to do.
