Judge Grounds Trump’s Deportation Flights for Guatemalan Kids

It was a dramatic holiday weekend showdown: planes full of Guatemalan children sat waiting on Texas tarmacs when a federal judge slammed the brakes on the Trump administration’s latest deportation push.

Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the US District Court in Washington issued an emergency order early Sunday, temporarily blocking the government from deporting dozens of unaccompanied minors and ordering that they remain in shelters for at least two weeks.

“I don’t want there to be any ambiguity about what I am ordering,” Sooknanan said. “You cannot remove any children.”

The ruling came after a frantic night of legal wrangling. Immigration authorities had already pulled kids out of shelters and loaded them onto charter planes when lawyers from the National Immigration Law Center rushed to court at 1 a.m., arguing the deportations violated federal law and put children at risk of violence and abuse back home.

By midday, the judge expanded her order to cover all Guatemalan children in US custody—roughly 2,000 are currently being held in shelters—after learning flights were preparing for takeoff. Government lawyers later confirmed the kids were deplaned and returned to federal custody.

The Trump administration insisted this wasn’t a mass deportation but a “repatriation,” claiming the Guatemalan government had asked for the children back to reunite them with parents and guardians.

“The United States government is trying to facilitate the return of these children to their parents or guardians,” said Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign.

But children’s attorneys pushed back, saying many of their clients had active immigration cases, feared returning to Guatemala, and never asked to go back.

“They don’t want to return,” lawyer Efrén Olivares told the court.

The Guatemalan government, meanwhile, had prepared to welcome more than 600 minors, with parents and relatives already gathering at reception centers in Guatemala City. Some families got late-night calls from kids saying they were being flown back—only to later learn the flights were halted.

The case has quickly become another flashpoint in President Trump’s sweeping second-term immigration crackdown. Just days earlier, a different federal judge blocked the administration from carrying out fast-track deportations far from the border.

White House adviser Stephen Miller blasted the ruling, accusing a “Democrat judge” of stopping children from reuniting with their parents. Immigrant advocates, though, called the overnight operation reckless.

“In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger,” Olivares said.

For now, the judge’s order buys the children two weeks while their lawyers fight for a longer reprieve. The next round of legal arguments is set for later this week.

Reuters, the New York Times, BBC, and the Independent contributed to this report.