By Gonzalez Olivieri, on Immigration Updates
On August 31, 2025, 76 Guatemalan migrant children who had come to the U.S. unaccompanied were awakened around 1:00 a.m. and placed on deportation flights by immigration authorities. One flight had already taken off but was forced to turn around after U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued an emergency temporary restraining order blocking the deportations. The children's attorneys argue that the deportations violate due process rights and federal laws protecting unaccompanied minors, noting that many of the children face serious threats in Guatemala, including gang violence, human trafficking, and family abuse.
The Trump administration defended the deportations as family reunifications, with officials stating that Guatemalan families had requested their children's return and that Guatemala had proposed a repatriation plan. However, immigration lawyers characterize this as a "false narrative" and argue that the middle-of-the-night removals without proper notice violated the children's legal rights to challenge their deportations. The case has been transferred to U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, with the government required to file opposition briefs by September 6 and a hearing scheduled for September 10. The initial restraining order applies to all Guatemalan minors in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, potentially affecting up to 700 children.
For more information on this, and other immigration matters, contact the attorneys at Gonzalez Olivieri LLC today.
Reference:
NPR, FAQ: More Details Emerge About the 76 Guatemalan Children Whose Deportations Were Stopped by a Federal Judge (Sept. 3, 2025), https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/g-s1-86788/faq-why-were-76-guatemalan-children-pulled-off-deportation-flights-in-the-middle-of-the-night.
