Photo credit: Decatur daily
A federal judge on Sunday barred the United States government from deporting 76 Guatemalan children.
APP reports that although the migrant children were already waiting on the tarmacs awaiting being sent to their home country, the judge sided with the attorneys for the children who said the government was breaking laws and sending their clients to potential peril.
The Guatemalan children who arrived without their parents or guardians will therefore stay for at least two weeks while the legal fight unfolds according to the ruling.
US Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said, “I do not want there to be any ambiguity.”
Almost immediately after the hearing, five charter buses pulled up to a plane at Valley International Airport in Texas. Earlier, authorities had walked the children toward the plane.
However, hey were all expected to have been returned to shelters overseen by the US Department of Heath and Human Services by Sunday evening, the \justice Department said in a court filing.
Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, which represents the children said, “This idea that on a long weekend in the dead of night they would wake up these vulnerable children and put them on a plane irrespective of the constitutional protection they had is something that should shock the conscience of all Americans.”
The administration said it was reuniting the children, at their country’s request, with parents or guardians, who sought their return. But lawyers for some of the children say that’s untrue and argue that in any event, authorities would have to follow a legal process that they did not.
