Image Credit: Anadolu / Contributor / Getty Images 
A federal judge has blocked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from deporting a group of unaccompanied Guatemalan children.
District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued a temporary restraining order on Sunday morning, as part of a class action suit against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Sooknanan’s order prohibits the government from removing “any of the individual Plaintiffs from the United States for 14 days absent further Order of the Court.”
The legal complaint was filed on behalf of 10 unaccompanied Guatemalan children whom the DHS was set to deport.
Their removal is “in clear violation of the unambiguous protections that Congress has provided them as vulnerable children,” the complaint states.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act allows unaccompanied migrant children to be returned to their home countries if they meet certain criteria.
The DHS has identified over 600 Guatemalan children it wants to deport as part of “a first of its kind pilot program through an agreement negotiated with the Guatemalan government,” the complaint says.
The Guatemalan government has agreed to accept hundreds of unaccompanied children in the US who are currently being detained in US facilities.
Secretary Noem visited Guatemala and Honduras last week, and said the governments of both countries had signed agreements for repatriation of migrants.
In related news, a federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from increasing the speed of deportations, claiming that the government is infringing the rights of illegals to a fair hearing before they are removed.
In a decision issued on Friday, US District Judge Jia Cobb described expedited deportation as a “skimpy process” whose implications threaten the rights not just of illegals but of American citizens too.
“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,” Cobb wrote in a 48-page decision.
“Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk,”
She continued in the 48-page opinion, “The Government could accuse you of entering unlawfully, relegate you to a bare-bones proceeding where it would ‘prove’ your unlawful entry, and then immediately remove you.”
“By merely accusing you of entering unlawfully, the Government would deprive you
of any meaningful opportunity to disprove its allegations,” she added. “Fortunately, that is not the law.”
As well as using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove illegals in an expedited manner, the Trump administration has expanded its use of rules that allow the fast-track deportation of illegals who have been in the country for less than two years.
Cobb said that she did not doubt the legality of the expedited process, but said her decision was based solely on the lack of due process.
“It merely holds that in applying the statute to a huge group of people living in the interior of the country who have not previously been subject to expedited removal, the Government must afford them due process. The procedures currently in place fall short.”
She added that “prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the Government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process.”
Last month, Cobb temporarily blocked the administration’s ability to fast-track the deportation of migrants who entered the country under President Biden’s “humanitarian parole” program.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) slammed Judge Cobb for her latest decision.
“This activist judge’s ruling ignores the President’s clear authorities under both Article II of the Constitution and the plain language of federal law,” a DHS official said, in a statement.
“The previous administration facilitated an invasion of our country at the southern border.”
“DHS is exercising its full authority under federal law by placing illegal aliens who have been here for less than two years into expedited removal. President Trump has a mandate to arrest and deport the worst of the worst. We have the law, facts, and common sense on our side.”
