Over Labor Day weekend, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its plans to deport more than 600 unaccompanied children to Guatemala.
Media Contact: John Henry, jhenry@childrensdefense.org, Media Relations Manager, 708-646-7679
HARLINGEN, TX—Children’s Defense Fund-Texas (CDF-TX) strongly opposes the Trump administration’s attempt to deport unaccompanied children to Guatemala without due process. This action violates the right to seek protection in the United States from persecution, trafficking, and other forms of abuse.
Overnight, authorities removed 76 children from the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and forced them onto planes in Texas in preparation for deportation, without notice and without any opportunity to challenge their removal or present their case to a judge.
Following this illegal action, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ordered the Trump administration to pause those plans and its efforts to deport more than 600 unaccompanied children to Guatemala, according to Politico. Children were then removed from planes at Valley International Airport in Harlingen to be returned to ORR custody, and advocates believe similar efforts at an airport in El Paso were thwarted by the ruling.
Earlier this year, CDF-Texas Senior Administrator of Policy and Advocacy, Trudy Taylor Smith, Esq., wrote in an opinion piece for the Texas Observer that all children, including unaccompanied immigrant children, deserve a childhood marked by safety and care. In response to this weekend’s events, she stated:
“Federal officials took children from government-run shelters in the middle of the night and tried to illegally deport them to a country where they face grave harm. This policy decision is every bit as egregious as the family separations we saw at the border in 2018, and it demonstrates that federal officials are willing to blatantly break the law and hurt children in pursuit of their political goals. These attempted deportations are also the natural result of the systematic dismantling of protections for children that we have witnessed since January. The Trump administration has sought to terminate basic protections from children in government custody and cut off immigrant children’s access to lawyers, and Congress has passed budget reconciliation legislation that authorizes indefinite family detention, funds construction of an expanded system of private immigration prisons, and creates new barriers for unaccompanied immigrant children to reunite with family members outside detention. Now is the time for all of us to demand that our leaders reject these heartless policies, follow the law, and protect children. CDF-Texas calls on elected officials to uphold children’s rights under the Flores Settlement Agreement and the Trafficking Victims Reauthorization Act, to guarantee legal representation and due process for every child, and to center children’s safety and well-being in all policy decisions.”