Employees of the Prosecutor General Bureau take the data from parents outside the Center for the reception of returnees while awaiting the arrival of minors intended to be expelled from the United States, at the base of the Guatemaltale Air Force in the city of Guatemala on August 31.
Johan Ordonez / AFP via Getty Images
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Johan Ordonez / AFP via Getty Images
A federal judge temporarily prevented the Trump administration from expelling hundreds of Guatemah children who have crossed the American border alone. Although the government has not obtained legal authorization to withdraw children, some of their lawyers said, Guatemah children were already responsible for aircraft on a tarmac while the judge led a hearing on the situation on Sunday, an American lawyer confirmed.
The temporary judgment, issued Sunday afternoon, allows lawyers for 14 more days to discuss the case and prevents children from being withdrawn over the next two weeks.
Children in the United States intended to withdraw were under the care of the Resettlement Office for Refugees from the Ministry of Health and Social Services. Since 2002, the Ministry of Health and Social Services has been run by federal law to house and take care of children who have entered the United States without parents or tutors.
After HHS took care of unaccompanied children, following their apprehension by other border agencies, minors are generally not authorized to be expelled without benefiting from the full immigration procedure. Even in certain circumstances where it is possible that unaccompanied children are united with tutors in their country of origin, they must always undergo a legal process which allows children to defend themselves and the American government to confirm that the return would be in the best interest of children, said Becky Wolozin, a main lawyer of the National Center for Youth Law, non -profit that worked on the case with other groups.
But this weekend, “no one had to plan that it happened,” said Wolozin, referring to the US government plan to expel hundreds of Guatemah children with little warning.
“On a basic line, you want the person to the other end to know when recovering them,” said Wolozin. “It was an extremely precipitated operation in the middle of the night.”
After learning that the US government planned to quickly withdraw up to 600 Guatemahs on the custody of the HHS before allowing children to make their business heard before the court, after having reported on August 29 by CNN, lawyers for children asked on Sunday morning, a district judge, Judge Sparkle Sooknan, issues a temporary detention order to prevent children.
During the hearing, the deputy deputy prosecutor general of the Immigration Ministry of Immigration Bureau, Drew Ensign, told Soknanan that planes containing Guatemah children were on the ground ready to take off, and that one of them could already have triggered and turned around.
ENSIGN also told judge Sooknann, appointed by Biden, that the Guatemalan government had asked for the return of children to their country of origin and that all parents of children had asked for their withdrawal from the United States
NPR asked the Government of Guatemala to comment but did not immediately hear. The Doj did not immediately respond to a request for NPR comments.
The lawyers of some of the children challenged that the tutors of their customers were all aware and in accordance with the plans to send minors to Guatemala. In a document filed on August 31, lawyers for the National Immigration Law Center said that the United States had not informed the children in advance that they were going to be kidnapped and that it would deprive them of their legal right to continue asylum in the United States
By sending children to Guatemala as expected, the US government could put children at risk of “mistreatment, negligence, persecution or torture”, children’s lawyers wrote in a petition placed on Sunday.
Wolozin said that it was a relief that Sooknana judge temporarily prevented children’s moves in Guatemala.
“The government is trying to run this as child protection, but this is not the case, it is children’s abuse,” said Wolozin. “It was not ordered, he jumped all the procedural protections.”
In a statement published on Sunday evening, the National Immigration Law Center said they intended to continue fighting to protect Guatemah children.
“In night deaths during a holiday weekend, the Trump administration has torn the vulnerable and frightened children from their bed and tried to return them in danger to Guatemala,” said Efrén Olivares, principal lawyer for the National Immigration Law Center. “We are encouraged, the court prevented this injustice from occurring before hundreds of children undergo irreparable damage.”
