The Trump administration is preparing to send more than 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children currently in U.S. custody back to their home country, CNN reported.
These children are under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) but would be returned through a new pilot program with the Guatemalan government.
“Sending children back without real safety plans is not ‘repatriation’—it is abandonment of the child and our nation’s commitments under U.S. and international law,” said Gladis Molina Alt, executive director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, in a statement to Newsweek.
She added: “The Trump administration is breaking the law by turning their backs on children who came here seeking protection.”
Newsweek reached out to HHS for comment on Friday morning.
During the 2024 election campaign, President Donald Trump often spoke about unaccompanied immigrant children who he said had been “lost” by the Biden administration. He pledged to find them and send them home. Many children have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents, sometimes after parents or guardians had already moved ahead to the United States.
Officials described this effort as the first of its kind and told staff to pause certain releases of Guatemalan children to relatives in the U.S., CNN reported. They told the network’s Priscilla Alvarez that they view the removals as “repatriations” instead of deportations.
It is not clear whether the children had appeared before an immigration judge to voluntarily say they wanted to return home, which would normally qualify as repatriation.
As of August 2025, there are fewer than 2,000 children in HHS custody, most from Central American countries including Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The Trump administration has also increased welfare checks of immigrant children across the country and placed more of them into expedited removal proceedings.
Advocates say these practices put vulnerable children at risk.
“Every child in U.S. custody has the right to due process, to seek protection under current asylum law, legal counsel, and an individualized decision that hears their claim for protection first,” Molina Alt told Newsweek. “To strip away those protections is to put children’s lives on the line. We will not stand by while the government treats children as political pawns instead of human beings with rights, voices, and futures.”
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, added: “Reports that the administration is planning to return hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children raise serious concerns about whether due process and child welfare standards are being upheld.
“Protections for these children were enacted with bipartisan support to ensure that vulnerable children are screened for trafficking, abuse, or fear of persecution before any decision is made about their future. Any new policy must be consistent with these longstanding legal protections and grounded in child welfare best practices.”
The pilot program with Guatemala could expand to include similar agreements with other countries if it proves successful.
