WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge is temporarily keeping in place measures preventing the Trump administration from deporting Guatemalan migrant children in government custody.
Judge Timothy J. Kelly’s decision Saturday keeps the government from removing Guatemalan children who came to the U.S. alone and are currently living in government shelters and foster care through Sept. 16.
Kelly’s order said he needed a brief extension to continue to study the issue because up until a hearing on Sept. 10 the facts of the case were still changing. His decision comes after the government during that hearing backtracked on previous claims that the children’s parents requested them back.
The court decision stems from a Labor Day weekend operation when the Trump administration attempted to remove dozens of Guatemalan migrant children who had come to the U.S. alone and were living in U.S. government shelters and foster care.
In a late night operation on Aug. 30, the administration notified shelters where migrant children traveling alone initially live after they cross the southern border that they would be returning the children to Guatemala and that they needed to have the kids ready to leave in a matter of hours.
Contractors for Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked up the Guatemalan children from shelters and foster care and transported them to the airport. The government has said in court filings that it identified 457 children for possible removal to Guatemala although that list was eventually whittled down to 327. In the end, 76 got as far as boarding planes in El Paso and Harlingen, Texas, early morning on Aug. 31 and were set to depart to Guatemala in what the government described as a first phase.
Immigration and children’s advocates, who had been alerted of possible efforts to remove Guatemalan minors, immediately sued the Trump administration to prevent the children’s removal. The advocates argued that many of these children were fleeing abuse or violence in their home countries and that the government was bypassing longstanding legal procedures meant to protect young migrants from being returned to potentially abusive or violent places.
A federal judge in Washington granted advocates a 14-day temporary restraining order largely preventing the Trump administration from removing migrant children in its care except in limited circumstances where an immigration judge had already ordered their removal after reviewing their cases. Kelly’s Saturday order extends that protection three more days.
The government has argued that it has the right to return children in their care and it was acting at the behest of the Guatemalan government.
The Guatemalan government has said that it was concerned over minors in U.S. custody who were going to turn 18 and would then be at risk of being turned over to adult detention facilities.
Children who cross the border alone are generally transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Health and Human Services Department. The children usually live in a network of shelters across the country that are overseen by the resettlement office until they are eventually released to a sponsor, usually a relative.
Children’s advocates have also asked the Washington court for longer-term protections preventing the government from removing all children in government custody, with a few limited exceptions, while the lawsuit plays out in court. Advocates made that request after hearing reports that the government was intending to remove Honduran children as well. The court has yet to rule on that request.
There are also temporary restraining orders in separate cases in Arizona and Illinois also filed during the Labor Day weekend where advocates sued to restrict the government from removing Guatemalan and later Honduran children, but those cases are more narrow in scope of children they cover than the Washington case.
