WASHINGTON — A pair of federal court rulings over the Labor Day weekend invalidated aggressive actions the Trump administration had taken on immigration enforcement.
Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ordered an unknown number of planes carrying unaccompanied Guatemalan children temporarily halted on Sunday, two days after Judge Jia Cobb struck down a policy used to bypass judicial review in quick removals of migrants far from the southern border. Both judges are of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The rulings are part of an ongoing clash between President Donald Trump and the federal judiciary over the administration’s immigration crackdown. Judges have raised concerns that immigrants’ due process rights are being violated.
On Sunday, Sooknanan voiced concern for unaccompanied children’s due process rights, and temporarily halted planes carrying the minors from taking off.
The administration had planned to deport 10 children to their home country of Guatemala.
The case resembled one earlier this year in which a judge ordered planes carrying Venezuelan men removed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 grounded. Despite the order, multiple planes landed in El Salvador where more than 200 Venezuelans were sent to a notorious mega-prison.
The 10 children, nationals of Guatemala, on the planes ranged in age from 10 to 17 and crossed the southern border alone. Attorneys in court filings stressed that the children had immigration cases pending before a judge and that the children expressed fear of returning to Guatemala.
The order followed Cobb’s order on Friday, granting a request from immigration rights groups to halt the implementation of a new policy that expanded expedited removal.
The administration has expanded the use of expedited removal, which allows for the quick removal of migrants, as a pillar of its aim to carry out mass deportations of people without permanent legal status.
For decades, administrations have applied expedited removal to immigrants apprehended at the southern border who cannot prove they have been in the United States for more than two years. If they cannot produce that proof, they are subject to a fast-track deportation without appearing before an immigration judge.
The Trump administration in January expanded expedited removal to apply nationwide, rather than only within 100 miles of the southern border.
In Cobb’s Friday opinion, she wrote that the administration likely violated the rights of immigrants and approached a universal violation of the constitutional right to due process. Former President Joe Biden appointed Cobb in 2021.
“In defending this skimpy process, the Government makes a truly startling argument: that those who entered the country illegally are entitled to no process under the Fifth Amendment, but instead must accept whatever grace Congress affords them,” she wrote. “Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk.”
In a flurry of action on Sunday, Sooknanan temporarily halted the deportation of the children for 14 days while the case continues after an emergency request from the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group.
Attorneys from NILC argued that if the children were returned, they could face violence, and the administration’s move to deport them violated immigration procedures for unaccompanied minors.
“Defendants are imminently planning to illegally transfer Plaintiffs to Immigration and Customs Enforcement … custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or even torture, against their best interests,” the attorneys wrote in their emergency filing.
The 10 children on the planes were taken off and put back into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to a status update filed Monday by NILC lawyers.
The Trump administration has identified up to 600 Guatemalan children to be removed under a pilot program created through an agreement with Guatemala, according to the court filings.
Sooknanan’s order applies to all roughly 2,000 Guatemalan unaccompanied children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Biden also appointed Sooknanan.
Carlos Ramíro Martínez, Guatemala’s minister of foreign affairs, told the New York Times in an interview that the initiative began when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Guatemala in July. He added that there is an agreement for Guatemala to accept more than 600 children.
DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
The State Department’s 2024 report on Guatemala details human rights concerns, such as violence, and advises against traveling to the country.
The case involving the unaccompanied children was reassigned to Judge Timothy James Kelly, whom Trump appointed in 2017.
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