Judge spanks Trump administration over ‘hasty’ attempt to deport migrant kids

A federal judge issued an injunction Thursday barring the Trump administration from deporting hundreds of illegal immigrant children to Guatemala, saying the government’s “error-laden operation” blew through safeguards designed to protect the children.

Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee to the court in Washington, said the administration’s defense of its plans “crumbled like a house of cards” once it was tested in court.

He certified a class action and issued a preliminary injunction to protect the minors.

Trump officials had said they were trying to reunify the children, who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied alien children, with their families back in Guatemala.

But Judge Kelly said the attempt to deport them was filled with bungles — including that the families hadn’t even asked for the children to come back.

“There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return. To the contrary, the Guatemalan attorney general reports that officials could not even track down parents for most of the children whom Defendants found eligible for their ’reunification’ plan. And none of those that were located had asked for their children to come back to Guatemala,” the judge wrote.

Lawyers for the children, meanwhile, said many of the children didn’t get a chance to fully argue why they should be allowed to stay here.

Judge Kelly said the “hasty” deportation operation ran afoul of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVRPA), which lays out strict standards for how the government must treat UACs from countries other than Mexico and Canada.

Under the law, minors who arrive in the U.S. without a parent are required to be turned over quickly from the Department of Homeland Security to Health and Human Services, which places them in shelters while seeking sponsors to take them more long-term as they go through their immigration cases.

The ruling is a significant blow to the Trump administration, which had aimed to try to find a way to clear out some of the backlog of migrant children in the HHS pipeline.

The government argued that the TVPRA allowed UACs to be deported even if they hadn’t gone through their full immigration case proceedings.

Federal lawyers pointed to part of the law encouraging “safe repatriation” with families outside the U.S. as justification for short-circuiting the court process.

The government lawyers said it ran potential deportees through a nine-point checklist to decide whether they were “appropriate for reunification,” including lacking a parent in the U.S. ready to sponsor them but having a parent in Guatemala, not having made an asylum claim, and no indication of trafficking concerns.

Lawyers for the children, meanwhile, produced numerous declarations from them challenging the government’s claims. They painted a picture of scared kids who often said they didn’t have family to return to, even if they had wanted to do so.

Judge Kelly said the government didn’t even ask the children whether they wanted to return. Instead HHS made judgments based on Homeland Security’s immigration files.

Judge Kelly said there was no evidence that “any child” wanted to return.

His ruling still allows deportation of Guatemalan children who have exhausted the immigration court process and have been ordered removed, or who have sought voluntary return.

Judge Kelly is the second jurist to be assigned to the case. It was first heard on an emergency basis by Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, who’d issued a temporary restraining order heading off the immediate deportation of the kids.

Some 76 of them had already been loaded on planes and were awaiting takeoff on Aug. 31 when lawyers rushed to court to stop them. Judge Sooknanan agreed, ordering the children off the planes.