Courts halt removal of 53 Guatemalan children from Arizona

Over the Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration attempted to quickly remove all Guatemalan children in U.S. custody, or nearly 700 kids across the nation — including nearly 53 from Arizona — but civil rights groups scrambled in the middle of the night and won temporary reprieves from a trio of federal judges. 

For a few moments, a 3-year-old girl wearing a pink dress and clutching two stuffed toys closed her eyes and napped in the arms of a caretaker in a packed courtroom as an immigration judge worked through a morning’s docket of immigration cases.

The girl’s 10-year-old brother sat nearby, the pair among more than a dozen children who faced immigration proceedings on a busy Monday morning in mid-August at the immigration court in Downtown Tucson. All of the children, who ranged between 3 and 17 years old, faced deportation back to their home countries; one boy to Honduras, the rest to Guatemala.

Among 17 children, only a handful had attorneys. As she court moved through the cases, Assistant Chief Judge Irene Feldman asked each child to grab a printed out list of possible attorneys before resetting asylum and immigration hearings for later in the fall as part and parcel of the U.S. immigration court system.

Over the Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration attempted to quickly remove all Guatemalan children in U.S. custody, or nearly 700 Guatemalan children across the nation — including the 3-year-old girl and her brother.

Civil rights groups scrambled in the middle of the night and won temporary reprieves from a trio of judges, including one in Arizona.

Two organizations, including the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Right—a Chicago-based advocacy group—successfully challenged the move in suit filed in Washington D.C., while Arizona-based Florence Immigrant
& Refugee Rights Project filed their own challenge on behalf of the 53 children in the state.

“The fact that the government
sought to implement this plan under the darkness of night, in the wee
hours of the morning, over a holiday weekend suggests that they intended
to minimize the ability of children to obtain legal support in
protection of their rights,” said Roxanna Avila-Cimpeanu, Florence
Project deputy director, in a social media post on Sept. 1. “The
government was attempting to violate the law, bypass due process, and
forcibly return children to the dangers they fled—in some cases to
life-threatening harm.”

The Florence Project said the move to repatriate the children comes in “direct violation of the children’s rights to seek protection in the United States.”

“This attempt by the Trump administration to send these Guatemalan children back to Guatemala against their wishes and without an appropriate court order is another escalation of the government’s egregious attacks on unaccompanied immigrant children,” Avila-Cimpeanu said in a published statement. 

“We are acting on behalf of 53 children who have all expressed to our legal team that they do not want to return to Guatemala. To repatriate them against their wishes before they are able to speak with an Immigration Judge is blatantly illegal, in direct violation of their rights, and puts children in danger of harm, including trafficking,” she said.

Among their clients is a 12-year-old girl who suffers from chronic kidney disease and relies on dialysis to stay alive, the group said. 

“Her illness is severe enough that she will require a kidney transplant,” they wrote, adding she has already been federal custody under the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Humane Services that is required to keep migrant children until they can be reunited with parents.

ORR has released around 23,976 children to parents or sponsors in 2025, according to federal data. A year earlier, the agency released 99,326 children.

Under
federal law, ORR is required to “feed, shelter, and provide medical
care” for unaccompanied children until “it is able to release them to
safe settings with sponsors (usually family members), while they await
immigration proceedings.”

Sponsors must pass a background
check, “ensure” the child’s attends immigration proceedings and report
to ICE for removal from the United States “if an immigration judge
issues a removal order or voluntary departure order,” according to the
agency’s website.

“She fears that she will not receive the care she needs in Guatemala,” the group said.

Florence added that the 3-year-old girl — identified in the complaint as L.D.S.D., and her brother J.E.S.D. — do not want to go back to Guatemala. J.E.S.D. said they have no family in Guatemala, and was thrilled to have representation. 

“I have an attorney that is going to help me!” he said, according to the Florence Project.

The group demanded U.S. officials follow “existing and well-enshrined laws that provide protections for unaccompanied children in acknowledgement of their special vulnerabilities and the government’s duty to protect them,” said Florence Project representatives. “These include the right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel, and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.”

“The government’s plan to remove children to Guatemala outside of these
protections cruelly ignores decades of long-standing federal law and
places children in harm’s way,” said the Arizona advocacy group.

‘Immediate action’

Florence Project staffers said they learned of the deportations from reporting by the New York Times and CNN on Aug. 29, and began receiving calls from families who said they were told their children would be removed.

Based on the rumors, Florence Project attorneys “began immediate action,” meeting with the 53 children through the Labor Day weekend. In their suit, the group said the attempt to remove the kids could hinder their “mission of providing high-quality legal services to as many unaccompanied children as possible.” 

“Many of the children have hearings before the immigration court, and representation will be hindered, if not impossible, if they are removed from the country,” the group said.

In several cases, the children who moved through Feldman’s courtroom in
mid-August had hearing scheduled in November and December for a chance
to claim asylum.

As the deportation loomed, one attorney told ICE officials the removals would “contravene the law,” but ICE officials did not respond, Florence Project staff said.

Following the suit, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez in Tucson issued a
temporary restraining order, writing doing so was “appropriate as the
evidence creates serious questions” whether Trump administration
officials are “attempting to remove” the children in violation of
federal law, including TVRPA.

“Because removal would deprive
Plaintiff Children of their rights to the removal process, they have
alleged that it is probable that they would suffer irreparable harm absent a stay,” Márquez wrote, adding attorney have shown a “substantial case on the merits.”

She later amended her order after she learned that “some of the children may have been in the process of being removed.”

“To
avoid any confusion,” she wrote, the government had to confirm ICE
officials didn’t remove any of the children, and if any were in the
process of removal “they must be returned to the United States and the
status quo ante immediately.”

Marquez gave federal officials until Monday to respond, and scheduled a hearing on Thursday, Sept. 11.

Marquez joined U.S. District Judges Jia Cobb and Sparkle Sooknanan blocking the attempt to remove the kids, including halting one flight that had at least 10 children on board, the Arizona Mirror reported.

Carlos Ramíro Martínez, Guatemala’s foreign minister, told the New York Times the removals were part of an agreement made this summer when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the country in July. 

‘I don’t want to answer that until I get an attorney’

During the hearing on Aug. 18, one girl told the court her father was a U.S. citizen living in Yuma — leading to a mad scramble by the attorney representing the U.S. government and Feldman. A former assistant U.S. attorney, Feldman has served as an immigration
judge since she was appointed by the Bush administration in 2008.

Later, Feldman asked 16-year-old girl if she would give the government phone numbers so federal officials, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, could contact her mom.

“I don’t want to answer that until I get an attorney,” the girl replied as she straightened out her glasses.

The teens were well-dressed. One boy wore a full suit, with a slightly-overly large jacket. Many of the kids had small fidget toys—including plastic snakes—that they held tight in their palms, or fiddled with as the morning wore on.

Some of the children crossed into the U.S. through Texas, while one boy arrived in Arizona in June, crossing as part of a group in the wilderness near Sasabe.

During the hearing, L.D.S.D. was asked to approach the court. She clambered up in the seat at the wide desk for defendants, and showed the court her two stuffed animals. A small stuffed pig, and “Roo” the baby kangaroo from Winnie the Poo.

At the hearing, L.D.S.D. did not have an assigned attorney, but one of two Florence Project attorneys — there for their own cases — volunteered to help the girl and speak toJudge  Feldman and the translator. 

Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act — a 2000 law that has been reauthorized multiple times — the federal government
“must ensure” children coming to the U.S. without parents or guardians
have “meaningful access to legal representation.” However, the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to cut funding for groups like the Florence Project that provide legal services to migrant children.

Through the translator, Feldman complimented the girl’s dress, while the court’s translator asked several questions about her toys. Her hearing was rescheduled for Nov. 24.

One boy asked for a Kʼicheʼ translator, to facilitate communication in that Mayan indigenous language, and told the court he feared returning home.

‘Escalation of attacks’

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) criticized the move
after receiving “deeply disturbing” reports from whistleblowers that
the Office of Refugee and Resettlement had finalized plans to remove the
children.

“This move threatens to separate children from
their families, lawyers, and support systems, to thrust them back into
the very conditions they are seeking refuge from, and to disappear
vulnerable children beyond the reach of American law and oversight,”said
Wyden in a letter to ORR Interim Director Angie Salazar.

Wyden, a
Democrat who serves on the Senate’s Finance Committee, has repeatedly
criticized immigration authorities. He said unaccompanied
children “often flee from abuse and violence in their home countries
before arriving alone at America’s borders,” and said ORR has “the legal
responsibility to ensure that these children are cared for and reunify
them with their family in a timely manner.” 

However, he said the
Trump administration has “quickly turned ORR into an immigration
enforcement arm that repeatedly uses unaccompanied children as bait to
draw out undocumented family members for detainment.” 

“The
escalation of attacks on unaccompanied children have led to serious
harm, including prolonged separation from their families and even an
increase in hopelessness and suicidal thoughts,” he said. 

“The administration’s decision to forcibly remove children from this country
is outrageous and would undoubtedly result in serious violations of
human rights, American law, and our shared responsibility to safeguard
the welfare of these extremely vulnerable children,” Wyden said. “The
world watched in horror as the first Trump administration ripped
children from their families and held them in inhumane conditions.” 

“It appears this administration is eager to go even farther,” Wyden said.