A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump Administration from deporting hundreds of unaccompanied children back to their home country of Guatemala, just as some of the children were boarded on planes and ready to depart.
The last-minute order wrapped up a frenetic legal battle that began in the early hours of Sunday morning when immigration advocacy groups filed a lawsuit after discovering shelters holding unaccompanied children were abruptly told to prepare them for deportation within two hours.
District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued a temporary block on the deportations at 4 a.m. and called a hearing for Sunday afternoon. That hearing was moved forward when she heard the deportations were already underway. A government lawyer later said one plane had taken off, but later came back when the order was issued.
“I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” she said, calling for the children to be taken off the planes and adding that her ruling applies broadly to Guatemalan minors who arrived in the U.S. without their parents or guardians.
Lawyers from the National Immigrant Law Center (NILC) said the children—who are in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)—were due to be handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Guatemala on Sunday.
They received memos sent by the ORR to shelters holding the children on Saturday telling them to “take proactive measures to ensure [unaccompanied children] are prepared for discharge within 2 hours of receiving this notification.” The memo called for the shelters to “have two prepared sack lunches” and one suitcase per child.
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The attorneys said in the lawsuit that they were filing on behalf of “hundreds of Guatemalan children at imminent risk of unlawful removal from the United States,” aged between 10 and 17 years.
The lawsuit said the estimated 600 children had “active proceedings before immigration courts across the country,” and removing them from the country violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Constitution.
“All unaccompanied children — regardless of the circumstances of their arrival to the United States — receive the benefit of full immigration proceedings, including a hearing on claims for relief before an immigration judge,” the attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.
“Congress provided even further procedural protection to unaccompanied minors in removal proceedings by mandating that their claims for asylum be heard in the first instance before an asylum officer in a non-adversarial setting rather than in an adversarial courtroom setting,” they added.
Judge Sooknanan granted the plaintiffs’ request for a restraining order to block the deportations “to maintain the status quo until a hearing can be set.”
At the hearing on Sunday, lawyers for the U.S. government insisted that the children were being repatriated with their parents—a claim that was contested by the immigration groups.
Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign said it was “outrageous that the plaintiffs are trying to interfere with these reunifications.”
“I have conflicting narratives from both sides here,” Sooknanan said.
Ensign told Judge Sooknanan the deportations were underway and that he believed one plane had taken off, but had come back.
Minutes after the hearing ended, the Associated Press reported that five charter buses pulled up to a plane parked at an airport near the border in Harlingen, Texas, where deportation flights are known to depart from.
Efrén C. Olivares, vice president of litigation and legal strategy at the National Immigration Law Center, had earlier condemned the abrupt move to deport the children.
“It is a dark and dangerous moment for this country when our government chooses to target orphaned 10-year-olds and denies them their most basic legal right to present their case before an immigration judge,” she said.
The ORR, which lies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said the deportations were the result of an agreement between the U.S. and Guatemala. Attorneys representing the children were sent memos informing them that the “Government of Guatemala has requested the return of certain unaccompanied alien children in federal custody for the purposes of reunifying the UAC with suitable family members.”
“This communication is provided as advance notice that removal proceedings may be dismissed to support the prompt repatriation of the child,” the memo, which was reviewed by TIME, said.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
