A Biden-appointed federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting hundreds of child and youth migrants back to their families in their home country of Guatemala.
U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on Sunday, “blocking any deportations of unaccompanied children from Guatemala and in U.S. custody who did not have a deportation order,” CBS News reported.
Sooknanan’s order came after she had issued a TRO early Sunday, “barring officials from sending a group of 10 migrant children between the ages of 10 and 17 to Guatemala, granting a request from attorneys who alleged the effort would skirt legal protections Congress established,” according to the outlet.
Per the outlet, Drew Ensign, who works as the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawyer “representing the Trump administration,” was directed by Sooknanan to “inform officials they had to halt their deportation plans”:
As that hearing got underway, Sooknanan announced she had just issued a broader temporary restraining order blocking any deportations of unaccompanied children from Guatemala and in U.S. custody who did not have a deportation order. She instructed Drew Ensign, the Justice Department lawyer representing the Trump administration, to quickly inform officials they had to halt their deportation plans.
Ensign acknowledged deportation planes had been prepared to take off on Sunday, but said they were all “on the ground” and still on U.S. soil. He said he believed one plane had taken off earlier but had come back.
While attorneys for the unaccompanied migrant children claimed that the “Trump administration had launched an effort to deport more than 600 minors to Guatemala without allowing them to request humanitarian protection,” Ensign explained that the administration was trying to “repatriate” the children to Guatemala to be reunited with their families.
Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller commented on Sooknanan’s order, explaining that the unaccompanied migrant children “have all self-reported that their parents are back home in Guatemala.”
“It’s actually much worse than even that,” Miller wrote in a post on X, responding to a post from Libs of TikTok. “These smuggled migrant children were orphaned in America by the Biden Administration. The minors have all self-reported that their parents are back home in Guatemala. But a Democrat judge is refusing to let them reunify with their parents.”
Sooknanan’s order comes after CNN reported that “multiple sources” had told the outlet that the Trump administration was planning to deport hundreds of migrant children back to Guatemala to be reunited with their family members.
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