Hundreds of Guatemalan children who were at risk of deportation over the weekend can stay in the U.S. for now. That’s after a quick-turn ruling from a federal court that temporarily blocks the Trump administration’s deportation attempt.
Legal service providers including Arizona’s Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project say they took legal action over the weekend after learning of plans to deport some 700 unaccompanied children back to Guatemala — including those with active immigration cases and even pending visas underway.
Florence Project deputy director Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu says her group represents 53 Guatemalan children in Arizona ranging in age from 3 to 17. They first heard about potential plans to deport children on Thursday. By Saturday night, staff inside Arizona-based Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters — the federal facilities where unaccompanied migrant children are held — began telling attorneys that children were going to be taken for deportation.
“And over the course of the wee hours of the morning, several of our clients were ripped from their beds, including children who were not targeted for removal that night,” she said during a press call about the lawsuit Tuesday.
Avila-Cimpeanu says at no point did government officials provide any notice of their plans over the weekend.
In court and on social media, the Trump administration said they were reuniting the children with their parents in Guatemala and argued the deportations were voluntary returns.
Gladis Molina Alt, executive director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, said the process violates international and U.S. law.
“It’s not repatriation, it’s not reunification, it is refoulement. It is the turning back of people that are seeking protection under international and domestic asylum laws,” she said. “I wouldn’t even call it a deportation, a deportation assumes some level of due process that has been completed that renders somebody lawfully able to be returned to their home country. These, in our mind, were involuntary, and unlawful, forcible of kids in the middle of the night.”
Legal advocates say the removals were still in the process over the weekend, despite court orders.
The Florence Project is one of three legal service providers in three states that filed suit on behalf of children — arguing the removals are unlawful under a US law to protect children from becoming victims of trafficking, and other statutes.
On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Marquez ruled to block deportations for the next two weeks and ordered any children who may have already left to be returned to the US.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the deportations or next steps in the legal challenge.
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