A federal judge on Thursday temporarily prevented the Trump administration from hastily deporting hundreds of Guatemalan children, faulting the government for relying on false pretexts that “crumbled like a house of cards” when presented in court.
In a striking opinion, Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, wrote that the government had misleadingly presented its actions as a “reunification” effort, bringing children back to their parents in Guatemala who it said had requested their return.
But he noted that a series of revelations since the children had been “roused from their beds in the middle of the night and driven to an airport” during the Labor Day weekend had cast doubt on the government’s representations, suggesting a rushed attempt to remove as many as 327 minors before their lawyers could mount a response. The children came to the United States as unaccompanied minors and have been housed under the supervision of the government in shelters or with families in foster care.
“There is no evidence before the court that the parents of these children sought their return,” he wrote.
In a previous directive, Judge Kelly paused the government’s ability to deport the children until Thursday. The new order extends that block for the foreseeable future while the lawsuit over their fate continues. He also extended the prohibition to all minors from Guatemala who entered the United States alone and have not exhausted their immigration appeals.
As the case has evolved since the holiday weekend, Judge Kelly has challenged a number of the government’s claims.
During a hearing last week, Judge Kelly grew frustrated after lawyers representing the children presented a report by the Guatemalan attorney general’s office showing that when the Guatemalan government had sought to contact the families of the children, some could not be located but none of the others had sought their children’s return.
According to the report, many believed their children were secure in the United States. Some expressed fear for their children’s safety if they were forced to return to conditions in Guatemala.
In the opinion, Judge Kelly noted that additional questions had emerged this week, after a report submitted to Congress by anonymous whistle-blowers asserted that the office that monitors the children in the Department of Health and Human Services had ignored its own data showing that at least 30 had signs of having suffered child abuse and neglect in Guatemala.
The whistle-blower report claimed the Office of Refugee Resettlement had raced to clear the children to be loaded onto planes in what Judge Kelly described as a “midnight operation,” in spite of the data.
“Defendants do not claim to have asked the children whether they want to go back to Guatemala, whether they were abused or neglected, or whether they want to return to their parents or legal guardians,” he wrote.
The Trump administration claimed it had followed a strict procedure for vetting the children before selecting them to be flown back, based on a checklist that included factors such as whether they might face danger.
After the government went as far as loading the children onto planes to be flown out over the Labor Day weekend, the judge on holiday duty, Sparkle L. Sooknanan, halted the flights and blocked the government from preparing to send more.
At the time, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, attacked Judge Sooknanan and pressed claims made by the Justice Department in court that the Trump administration was returning stranded children who wanted to leave.
“The Biden judge is effectively kidnapping these migrant children and refusing to let them return home to their parents in their home country,” he wrote on social media.
But Judge Kelly, who has since inherited the case, dismissed the notion that the government was acting responsibly or exercising a narrow authority allowed under the law to repatriate unaccompanied children from abroad.
He wrote that the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act allows children to be sent back to their home country only after a strenuous determination that it is in their best interest. He added that the law was designed to prevent child trafficking, and the rushed attempted removal of the children appeared to stretch the law’s intended use.
“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,” he wrote.
He said the process outlined in the law was designed to avoid “rushed, seemingly error-laden operation to send unaccompanied alien children back to their home countries.” Lawyers from the National Immigration Law Center who represented the children had asked Judge Kelly to block the deportation of a larger group of children, roughly 2,000 of whom are living in shelters. They nonetheless celebrated the decision, saying it had prevented an attempt to remove the children without any legal resistance.
“The court saw through the government’s repeated misrepresentations of critical facts to try to justify the indefensible targeting of vulnerable children who would have faced danger if sent to other countries,” Efrén C. Olivares, a vice president at the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement.
While he limited the ruling on Thursday to Guatemalan children, Judge Kelly, who was appointed to the bench by Mr. Trump in 2017, warned the government not to interpret the opinion as an invitation to expand its operations.
“Of course, the court does not foreclose expanding the class later if developments warrant that adjustment,” he wrote. “Defendants should not construe this decision as an invitation to take similar action with respect to these other unaccompanied alien children.”