HARLINGEN, Texas (Border Report) — Lawyers representing hundreds of Guatemalan children targeted for deportation on Labor Day weekend on Monday called “chaos” the hours leading up to planes loaded with children in South Texas.
“The chaos was at all levels,” said Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu, deputy director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which assists migrants with free legal representation in Arizona.
“We were ready to act immediately to prevent the removals. We made repeated attempts to communicate with various government agencies and staff in order to get more information regarding which clients are being targeted, why they were being forcibly removed, who made that determination, and how they did so. But we were kept in the dark, and we continue to be kept in the dark about the what the government is planning for our clients,” she said Monday on a webinar with other nonprofits that assisted children fighting deportation.
The advocacy groups said that 90% of the children targeted for deportation by the Trump Administration are Indigenous, most members of 22 Mayan cultures and different dialects in Guatemala. Many of the children speak little Spanish and hardly any English.
As many as 600 children — roughly one quarter of the total number of children held under the Office of Refugee Resettlement — who came to the United States as unaccompanied minors could face deportation, they said.
This includes a 10-year-old boy and his 3-year-old sister who Avila-Cimpeanu said had crossed the Southwest border to reunite with their parents in America. She says they have no close family to return to in Guatemala.
Another client is a pregnant 17-year-old teen whose mother is deceased and father is upset about the baby. She says they fear for her safety if she is returned.
The Trump administration says the families, as well as the Guatemalan government, wants the children repatriated.
But the lawyers say all of these children have pending asylum cases and have asked to remain in the United States.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a temporary ruling preventing the children with no removal orders from being deported.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Gladis Molina of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, says there is a legal process for repatriating children who want to voluntarily return. That includes safeguards for their wellbeing and ensuring they have homes to return to in their home countries.
However she says in the frantic hours leading up to the children being put on planes bound for Guatemala, none of those processes were put in place.
“When kids are undergoing legal processes, there’s a way that they can ask for voluntary departure, usually under safeguards, to be returned to their home country in a safe manner. That is not what was happening here. Contrary to the government’s claims, these were not international reunifications or safe repatriations that were that were happening,” Molina said.
“What we really were seeing was the involuntary and unlawful return of children, the cancellation of hearings that kids had,” Molina said. “What we were seeing was an operation that was happening under the cover of night and not under the cover of law. It was not an operation that was respecting international or domestic law, that we have in the books for asylum. We found that was happening was really the return, the turn back of people seeking protection. In this case, kids in government custody.”
Lawyers say the children were woken from their sleep overnight on Aug. 30 and put on flights bound for South Texas.
About 76 children were loaded in two planes that waited on the tarmac at Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas.
One plane took off and quickly returned after learning a federal judge in Washington, D.C., had issued a temporary injunction halting the deportation of children who have not had final removal orders issued.
On Friday, lawyers amended the complaint and added Honduran children, which they say are also now targeted for deportation to their home country.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that this timing was not a coincidence. To initiate this plan in the middle of the night on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend suggests that the government intended to carry this out at a time when it would be harder for children to have access to legal support and protection, and when the general public wouldn’t be paying attention,” Avila-Cimpeanu said.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
Read: Read More