A federal judge has thrown the Trump administration’s hardline immigration push into chaos. Late Sunday, the courtroom decision stopped the midnight deportation of hundreds of Guatemalan children.
District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued a restraining order just as reports surfaced that unaccompanied minors, some as young as ten, were being hustled onto planes bound for Guatemala City. Immigration advocates warned as many as 600 kids were in immediate danger of being deported “in the dead of night,” with no chance to make their asylum case.
A federal judge on Sunday blocked the Trump administration from deporting 76 unaccompanied Guatemalan children from the United States to Guatemala. ABC News’ Selena Wang has the latest. https://t.co/a6bu2mf1V1 pic.twitter.com/yhFdpefiWI
— ABC News (@ABC) September 1, 2025
The children had all crossed into the U.S. alone and are currently in government custody while their claims work through the system. Lawyers argued that fast-tracking their return would expose them to abuse and persecution back home.
Judge Sooknanan didn’t mince words during an emergency hearing, demanding assurances from administration lawyers that no flights had already departed. A Justice Department attorney admitted one plane may have briefly taken off but returned to U.S. soil. By the afternoon, the judge had expanded her order to cover all unaccompanied minors facing deportation, freezing the removals for at least 14 days.
The Trump Administration was loading Guatemalan children on a plane that were unaccompanied sending them God only knows where. They did this on a Holiday weekend in the Early morning hours. They thought nobody would know, but lawyers did & got a Judge to stop them immediately. 😡 pic.twitter.com/Y4nspsDYIa
— Suzie rizzio (@Suzierizzo1) September 1, 2025
The move blindsided families in Guatemala, many of whom were already waiting at a reception center in the capital. Parents and relatives had gathered to greet their children, only to be told the flights had been blocked. “Now we don’t know when he will return,” said Xiomara Lima, whose 17-year-old son called her at 1 a.m. to say he was being sent back before the order landed. Another man, Gilberto López, said he traveled hours from a rural village to welcome his nephew, only to learn he wasn’t coming. “He went [to the U.S.] to help us, because we’re poor and there’s no cure here for our health problems,” López explained.
The Guatemalan government, led by President Bernardo Arévalo, blasted the U.S. court’s decision. Arévalo had personally pitched a pilot program to President Trump that would allow for mass repatriations framed as “family reunifications.” He vowed to keep pressing Washington to greenlight the plan.
But immigrant advocates painted a very different picture, accusing the Trump team of orchestrating a covert deportation blitz designed to sidestep federal protections for migrant kids. “In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala,” said Efrén C. Olivares of the National Immigration Law Center, which brought the lawsuit. “We are heartened the court prevented this injustice before hundreds of children suffered irreparable harm.”
🚨NEW: Federal Judge Sparkle Sooknanan has blocked the Trump Administration from deporting unaccompanied Guatemalan children.
RETWEET to thank Judge Sooknanan! pic.twitter.com/PwFZDMjUq9
— Protect Kamala Harris ✊ (@DisavowTrump20) August 31, 2025
Inside the White House, the fury was immediate. Senior immigration adviser Stephen Miller slammed the ruling, claiming the minors had admitted their parents were in Guatemala and accusing Judge Sooknanan of blocking family reunifications for partisan reasons.
The showdown marks the latest escalation in Trump’s second-term immigration blitz. The president has doubled down on his promise to purge the country of undocumented migrants, empowered by a Supreme Court decision in June that loosened restrictions on deportations.
For now, the flights are grounded, the kids remain in custody, and both sides are digging in for a prolonged fight. The courtroom drama may have stopped a midnight deportation, at least temporarily, but it also exposed the raw stakes of Trump’s immigration war: children caught in the crossfire.
