A federal judge extended a pause on the Trump administration‘s ability to deport a group of unaccompanied Guatemalan children back to their home country, after the Justice Department walked back claims that all of the children’s parents wanted them returned to Guatemala.
Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia extended through Tuesday a previous order by U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, which restricted the removal of a group of unaccompanied Guatemalan children that the Trump administration initially claimed it was reunifying with family. The initial order was placed over Labor Day weekend.
Kelly ordered that the Trump administration “shall not transfer, repatriate, remove, or otherwise facilitate the transport of any Plaintiff or member of the putative class from the United States until after 11:59 p.m. on September 16, 2025, absent further order of the Court,” via a filing on the docket over the weekend.
Kelly, an appointee of President Donald Trump, said he extended the order to “fully consider” the developments in the case, which he heard during a court hearing last week.
During last week’s hearing, the Justice Department walked back a claim, made during a previous hearing, that all of the children it was seeking to return to Guatemala had family who had requested their return. That admission created confusion about a case that attracted national attention earlier this month.
The Guatemalan government had previously said it wanted to attempt to return unaccompanied children in the U.S. who were nearing the age of 18 to their families in Guatemala in order to avoid them ending up in adult detention centers in the U.S. Officials from the U.S. identified 609 unaccompanied Guatemalan children in their custody aged 14 through 17 years old.
A review by Guatemalan officials, which was posted to the court’s docket, showed they were only able to get in contact with families for 115 of the children to review if they could be suitably returned to their families. Of those assessments conducted, only 50 families said they were willing to welcome their children back. Still, the review also noted the parents did not request their children’s return from the United States. Another 59 families “expressed annoyance” when the Guatemalan government attempted to determine whether their homes were suitable destinations for the children and rejected the government’s questions. Of the other six families, four said their child had been living with a sponsor in the U.S., and the other two said their child had returned and was living in their home.
The legal battle over the children comes as the Trump administration fights aggressively to remove illegal immigrants from the U.S., who largely entered the country illegally under the Biden administration. The unaccompanied alien children are currently in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Unaccompanied alien children are defined as those who have “no lawful immigration status in the United States,” are under the age of 18, and have either no legal guardian in the U.S. or no guardian able to “provide care and physical custody” in the U.S., per the ORR. A significant number of these children arrive at the U.S. border without any guardian and remain in ORR custody.
The Justice Department had originally claimed that all of the unaccompanied children at the center of this lawsuit were being reunified with family, while lawyers for the children claimed the Trump administration had failed to give the children an opportunity to challenge their removals from the United States.
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Sooknanan had issued the pause due to the “conflicting narratives” by the two sides. Kelly determined he needed more time to sort out the confusion.
The extended order marks the latest instance of a federal judge halting removals by the Trump administration amid legal challenges to deportations of groups of people. The president’s deportation agenda has faced several speed bumps in federal court, usually by judges appointed by Democrats, but Kelly’s weekend extension is a rare instance of a judge appointed by Trump pausing removals.