A federal district judge on Sept. 18 formally blocked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from deporting a group of Guatemalan children who entered the United States illegally and without parents.
The new order issued by Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia covers 10 plaintiffs whom the DHS wants to remove from the United States, as well as an unspecified number of children already in federal custody.
The newly issued preliminary injunction is an upgrade of a temporary restraining order preventing removal that was originally issued on Aug. 31 and then repeatedly extended by the district court.
The plaintiffs filed suit after media outlets reported on Aug. 29 that the DHS was planning “to imminently remove hundreds of Guatemalan unaccompanied minors to Guatemala,” according to the legal complaint filed in the case.
The government’s effort to deport the minors, who have “active proceedings before immigration courts across the country,” is “in clear violation of the unambiguous protections that Congress has provided them as vulnerable children,” according to the complaint.
Removing the minors would violate the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Constitution, the complaint stated.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act provides that unaccompanied minors from the contiguous countries of Mexico and Canada who are present in the United States may be returned to their home countries if they meet certain criteria.
The minors must be determined not to be victims of human trafficking and not to have a fear of returning to their home countries.
The statute provides that unaccompanied children from noncontiguous countries, such as Guatemala, should be treated differently.
Such children must be placed with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and are put in standard removal proceedings only if they are found to be victims of human trafficking or fear returning to their home country.
The case, filed as a class action, is known as L.G.M.L. v. Noem.
Federal and state court rules govern whether a class action gets certified and is allowed to proceed. Until a class is certified, the members are referred to as putative members of the class.
The putative class in this case includes all Guatemalan unaccompanied minors in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement as of 1:02 a.m. on Aug. 31, which is when the legal complaint in the case was originally filed, according to an order previously issued by Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
In his Sept. 18 order, Kelly provisionally certified the class, which means minors who are not named plaintiffs in the case but who fall within the definition of the class are now parties in the lawsuit.
In an opinion accompanying the order, Kelly said weeks ago the caretakers of the children were informed late at night that they should have the children ready to be picked up in as little as two hours. The children were awakened and driven to an airport, at which some were placed on airplanes.
A judge on emergency duty issued a temporary restraining order preventing the government from removing the minors from the United States, the opinion stated.
At a court hearing later that day, a government attorney said the administration was attempting to reunite the children with parents who asked for them to be returned, Kelly said.
“But that explanation crumbled like a house of cards about a week later. There is no evidence before the court that the parents of these children sought their return,” Kelly’s opinion reads.
The attorney general of Guatemala said that officials could not locate parents for most of the minors, and none of those who had been located had sought their children’s return, the judge said.
It is unclear whether the federal government will appeal Kelly’s order.
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