U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan has issued a temporary restraining order preventing President Donald Trump’s government from deporting 600 unaccompanied children from Guatemala.
In an emergency ruling on Sunday, Judge Sooknanan said the order was needed because the plaintiffs “satisfied the four factors governing the issuance of preliminary relief.” The ruling came just hours before the planned deportations were set to begin.
A lawsuit from the National Immigration Law Center argued that unaccompanied children are not subject to expedited deportation.
“All unaccompanied children — regardless of the circumstances of their arrival to the United States — receive the benefit of full immigration proceedings, including a hearing on claims for relief before an immigration judge,” the attorneys representing the children wrote. “Defendants’ actions are thus exposing children to multiple harms in returning them to a country where they fear persecution and by flouting their legal obligations to care for them in the United States.”
The Trump administration called the plan a “first of its kind pilot program.”
