Judge Halts U.S. Effort to Deport Guatemalan Children as Planes Sit on Tarmac

The temporary block ended another last-minute flurry of legal action over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Judge Temporarily Halts Deportation of Guatemalan Children

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With children already loaded onto planes, a federal judge on Sunday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting dozens of them. Moises Castillo/Associated Press

By Miriam Jordan and Aishvarya Kavi
Published Aug. 31, 2025
Updated Sept. 1, 2025, 3:11 a.m. ET
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With children already loaded onto planes, a federal judge on Sunday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting dozens of Guatemalan minors and demanded assurances that they would remain in shelters until a more permanent ruling.

The order brought to a close, for now, another last-minute flurry of court action in the administration’s mass deportation drive. Lawyers for the children said that they would face peril if they were sent to Guatemala and that doing so would deny them due process. They also argued that the government had ignored special protections for minors who cross the border alone.

In the early morning hours on Sunday, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order forbidding the administration from deporting the children after the National Immigration Law Center filed an emergency request. … Judge Sooknanan’s order was intended to be in place until an emergency hearing could be held in the afternoon. But there was initial confusion among lawyers whether the order applied to a limited number of children.

Dozens of children were then removed by immigration authorities from shelters overnight and boarded onto chartered planes. After lawyers for the children notified the judge, the emergency hearing was moved up to midday, and with planes awaiting takeoff in Texas, the judge clarified her order to apply to all Guatemalan children in the custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement for the next 14 days while the case is pending. She directed the government to take the children off the planes, and in a court document on Sunday evening, the government confirmed that was done. … About 2,000 children, a majority of them from Guatemala, are currently being held in dozens of shelters.

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Miriam Jordan reports from a grass roots perspective on immigrants and their impact on the demographics, society and economy of the United States.

Aishvarya Kavi works in the Washington bureau of The Times, helping to cover a variety of political and national news.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 1, 2025, Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge Blocks Deportation Of Children To Guatemala . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe