Migrant kids put on planes can stay, for now

In the predawn hours, a federal judge halts Texas flights to deport minors to Guatemala.

- By VALERIE GONZALEZ, REBECCA SANTANA AND JENNIFER PELTZ

VALERIE GONZALEZ Associated Press.

BUSES unload passengers in Harlingen, Texas, on Sunday. A 2:30 a.m. call to a U.S. judge grounded the flight.

With migrant children waiting on tarmacs to be sent to their native Guatemala, a federal judge Sunday temporarily blocked the flights, siding with attorneys for the children who said the government was breaking laws and sending their clients to potential peril.

The extraordinary drama played out over predawn hours onthe Labor Day weekend and vaulted from tarmacs in Texas to a courtroom in Washington. It was the latest showdown over the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration — and the latest high-stakes clash between the administration’s enforcement efforts and legal safeguards that Congress created for vulnerable migrants.

Guatemalan children who arrived at the border without their parents or guardians will stay for at least two weeks while the legal fight unfolds, according to the ruling.

“I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” said U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan.

“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 protections that they had is something that should shock the conscience of all Americans,” said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, which represents the children, after Sunday's hearing.

The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

The chaotic, rapid-fire developments resembled a March weekend showdown over the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Advocates implored a federal judge to halt deportations they believed were imminent, while the Trump administration was silent about its plans.