SAN ANTONIO – A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deport more than 70 Guatemalan children during a late-night operation over the holiday weekend.
The unaccompanied children, aged 13 to 17, were housed at Compass Connections, a facility contracted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in San Antonio, when authorities attempted to suddenly remove them Saturday night.
“The facilities holding these children were given approximately two hours to have all of the Guatemalan children ready to be discharged so that immigration could disappear them to Guatemala in the dead of night, on the middle of a holiday weekend,” said Jonathan Ryan, an immigration attorney representing some of the children.
The children were taken to Harlingen, where planes waited on the tarmac for hours as attorneys successfully sought a temporary restraining order from a federal judge.
The Trump administration claimed the deportation attempt was in response to Guatemala’s request to reunite the children with parents or guardians seeking their return. However, Ryan disputed this assertion.
“These are children who are set for immigration court hearings before a U.S. immigration judge,” Ryan said. “These are children who were pursuing humanitarian visas, asylum.”
Ryan said the attempted deportation took an emotional toll on the children.
“You saw children crying. Children staring off into the void, contemplating the harm that they were expecting to meet when they were returned to those countries,” Ryan said. “What I saw were children who looked broken.”
The temporary restraining order allows the children to remain in the United States for at least two weeks while their cases move through the legal system. Those removed from Compass Connections remain in Harlingen awaiting what happens next.
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