BREAKING: Trump Judge Blocks Trump From Deporting Guatemalan Children
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, rules the administration lied about Guatemalan parents asking for their kids back.
WASHINGTON — In a stunning rebuke to the Trump administration, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly — himself a Trump appointee — has issued a preliminary injunction blocking the mass deportation of hundreds of Guatemalan children, finding that the government’s rushed “reunification” plan was built on falsehoods.
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Kelly’s 43-page opinion, released Thursday, concluded that the administration’s claims “crumbled like a house of cards” when Guatemala’s own attorney general reported that most parents of the targeted children could not even be located — and those who were found had not asked for their children’s return.
The ruling extends an emergency block first issued over Labor Day weekend by Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who halted deportation flights in the middle of the night after lawyers raced into court as children were being pulled from shelters and foster homes and placed on buses to airports.
“On this record, it appears that Defendants intend to send back to Guatemala many unaccompanied children without an identified parent or legal guardian there,” Kelly wrote, stressing that federal law lays out specific safeguards for unaccompanied minors — safeguards the administration appeared to bypass.
The court provisionally certified a class of Guatemalan children in U.S. custody who have not received a final order of removal or been granted voluntary departure, ensuring broad protection as the case proceeds.
Advocates called the ruling a lifeline. “Today’s court decision is a significant victory for the hundreds of children who are now safe from the Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to expel them from the United States,” said Efrén Olivares of the National Immigration Law Center.
The Department of Justice has not explained why its lawyers assured Judge Sooknanan that parents had requested the children’s return — a statement later withdrawn. Government attorneys now concede the late-night operation was “unfortunate” and frightened the children involved.
The ruling represents one of the most significant legal setbacks yet to Trump’s mass deportation push, undercutting a centerpiece of his administration’s claims: that deporting children is in the name of family reunification.
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