Tag Archives: Office of Refugee Resettlement

Associated Press: Legal aid group sues to preemptively block U.S. from deporting a dozen Honduran children

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A legal aid group has sued to preemptively block any efforts by the U.S. government to deport a dozen Honduran children, saying it had “credible” information that such plans were quietly in the works.

The Arizona-based Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP) on Friday added Honduran children to a lawsuit filed last weekend that resulted in a judge temporarily blocking the deportation of dozens of migrant children to their native Guatemala.

In a statement, the organization said it had received reports that the U.S. government will “imminently move forward with a plan to illegally remove Honduran children in government custody as soon as this weekend, in direct violation of their right to seek protection in the United States and despite ongoing litigation that blocked similar attempted extra-legal removals for children from Guatemala.”

FIRRP did not immediately provide The Associated Press with details about what information it had received about the possible deportation of Honduran children. The amendment to the organization’s lawsuit is sealed in federal court. The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to email requests for comment on Friday and Saturday.

The Justice Department on Saturday provided what is perhaps its most detailed account of a chaotic Labor Day weekend involving the attempted deportation of 76 Guatemalan children. Its timeline was part of a request to lift a temporary hold on their removal.

Over Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration attempted to remove Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. alone and were living in shelters or with foster care families in the U.S.

Advocates who represent migrant children in court filed lawsuits across the country seeking to stop the government from removing the children, and on Sunday a federal judge stepped in to order that the kids stay in the U.S. for at least two weeks.

The government initially identified 457 Guatemalan children for possible deportation, according to Saturday’s filing. None could have a pending asylum screening or claim, resulting in the removal of 91. They had to have parents or legal guardians in Guatemala and be at least 10 years old.

In the end, 327 children were found eligible for deportation, including 76 who boarded planes early Sunday in what the government described as a first phase, according to a statement by Angie Salazar, acting director of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. All 76 were at least 14 years old and “self-reported” that they had a parent or legal guardian in Guatemala but none in the United States.

The Justice Department said no planes took off, despite a comment by one of its attorneys in court Sunday that one may have but returned.

Children who cross the border alone are generally transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Health and Human Services Department. The children usually live in a network of shelters across the country that are overseen by the resettlement office until they are eventually released to a sponsor — usually a relative

Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.

Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and El Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.

Justice Department lawyers said federal law allows the Department of Health and Human Services to “repatriate” or “reunite” children by taking them out of the U.S., as long as the child hasn’t been a victim of “severe” human trafficking, is not at risk for becoming so if he or she is returned to their native country and does not face a “a credible fear” of persecution there. The child also cannot be “repatriated” if he or she has a pending asylum claim.

The FIRRP lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to the Florence Project that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the suit was initially filed last week.

Some children have parents who are already in the United States.

The lawsuit demands that the government allow the children their legal right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.

Legal aid group sues to preemptively block U.S. from deporting a dozen Honduran children
A legal aid group has sued to preemptively block any efforts by the U.S. government to deport a dozen Honduran children, saying it had “credible” information that such plans were quietly in the works.

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-children-trump-deportations-guatemala-honduras-70c0912b3ee8c1038e793974b7141d67

L.A. Times: Trump administration plans to remove nearly 700 unaccompanied migrant children, senator says

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  • Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called on the government to halt the deportation plans.
  • The removals would violate the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s long-established practice of protecting such children, Wyden said.

The Trump administration is planning to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. without their parents, according to a letter sent Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, and the Central American country said it was ready to take them in.

The removals would violate the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s “child welfare mandate and this country’s long-established obligation to these children,” Wyden told Angie Salazar, acting director of the office within the Department of Health and Human Services that is responsible for migrant children who arrive in the U.S. alone.

“This move threatens to separate children from their families, lawyers, and support systems, to thrust them back into the very conditions they are seeking refuge from, and to disappear vulnerable children beyond the reach of American law and oversight,” the Democratic senator wrote, asking for the deportation plans to be terminated.

It is another step in the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement efforts, which include plans to surge officers to Chicago for an immigration crackdown, ramping up deportations and ending protections for people who have had permission to live and work in the United States.

Guatemalan Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Martínez said Friday that the government has told the U.S. it is willing to receive hundreds of Guatemalan minors who arrived unaccompanied to the United States and are being held in U.S. facilities.

Guatemala is particularly concerned about minors who could age out of the facilities for children and be sent to adult detention centers, he said. The exact number of children to be returned remains in flux, but they are currently discussing a little over 600. He said no date has been set yet for their return.

That would be almost double what Guatemala previously agreed to. The head of the country’s immigration service said last month that the government was looking to repatriate 341 unaccompanied minors who were being held in U.S. facilities.

“The idea is to bring them back before they reach 18 years old so that they are not taken to an adult detention center,” Guatemala Immigration Institute Director Danilo Rivera said at the time. He said it would be done at Guatemala’s expense and would be a form of voluntary return.

The plan was announced by President Bernardo Arévalo, who said then that the government had a moral and legal obligation to advocate for the children. His comments came days after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Guatemala.

The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest move, which was first reported by CNN.

Quoting unidentified whistleblowers, Wyden’s letter said children who do not have a parent or legal guardian as a sponsor or who don’t have an asylum case already underway “will be forcibly removed from the country.”

The idea of repatriating such a large number of children to their home country also raised concerns with activists who work with children navigating the immigration process.

“We are outraged by the Trump administration’s renewed assault on the rights of immigrant children,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, president and CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. “We are not fooled by their attempt to mask these efforts as mere ‘repatriations.’ This is yet another calculated attempt to sever what little due process remains in the immigration system.”

Santana, Seitz and Gonzalez write for the Associated Press. Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas. AP writers Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City and Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

They already tried.

Judge already said “nyet”.

One airborne plane was even forced to return & unload the kids.

Trump administration plans to remove nearly 700 unaccompanied migrant children, senator says
The Trump administration plans to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children who crossed into the U.S. without their parents

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-08-29/trump-administration-plans-to-remove-nearly-700-unaccompanied-migrant-children-senator-says

Time: Judge Blocks Deportation of Hundreds of Unaccompanied Children as Flights Were Ready to Take Off

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A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump Administration from deporting hundreds of unaccompanied children back to their home country of Guatemala, just as some of the children were boarded on planes and ready to depart.

The last-minute order wrapped up a frenetic legal battle that began in the early hours of Sunday morning, when immigration advocacy groups filed an emergency lawsuit after discovering shelters holding unaccompanied children were abruptly told to prepare them for deportation within two hours.

District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued a temporary block on the deportations at 4 a.m. and called a hearing for Sunday afternoon. That hearing was moved forward when she heard the deportations were already underway, and the judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking deny deportations for 14 days.

“I do not want there to be any ambiguity about what I am ordering,” Judge Sooknanan said, adding that the government “cannot remove any children” while the case is ongoing.

The judge ordered the children to be taken off the planes and made clear that her ruling applies to all Guatemalan minors who arrived in the U.S. without their parents or guardians.

Some children were taken off planes as they were waiting to take off on the tarmac. A government lawyer said in the hearing that one plane had taken off, but later came back when the order was issued.

In their lawsuit, lawyers from the National Immigrant Law Center (NILC) said the children—who are in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)—were due to be handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Guatemala on Sunday.

The ORR sent memos to shelters holding the children on Saturday telling them to “take proactive measures to ensure [unaccompanied children] are prepared for discharge within 2 hours of receiving this notification.” The memo called for the shelters to “have two prepared sack lunches” and one suitcase per child.

The NILC attorneys said in the lawsuit that they were filing on behalf of “hundreds of Guatemalan children at imminent risk of unlawful removal from the United States,” aged between 10 and 17 years.

The lawsuit said the estimated 600 children had “active proceedings before immigration courts across the country,” and removing them from the country violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Constitution.

“All unaccompanied children — regardless of the circumstances of their arrival to the United States — receive the benefit of full immigration proceedings, including a hearing on claims for relief before an immigration judge,” the attorneys wrote in the lawsuit. 

“Congress provided even further procedural protection to unaccompanied minors in removal proceedings by mandating that their claims for asylum be heard in the first instance before an asylum officer in a non-adversarial setting rather than in an adversarial courtroom setting,” they added. 

Judge Sooknanan granted the plaintiffs’ request for a restraining order to block the deportations early Saturday morning “to maintain the status quo until a hearing can be set.”

At the hearing on Sunday, lawyers for the U.S. government insisted that the children were being repatriated with their parents. Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign said it was “outrageous that the plaintiffs are trying to interfere with these reunifications.”

That claim was contested by the immigration advocacy groups and attorneys for some of the children, who said at least some of the children said they did not want to return and some faced danger back in Guatemala.

“I have conflicting narratives from both sides here,” Sooknanan said.

“Absent action by the courts, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to very dangerous situations,” she added.

Ensign told Judge Sooknanan the deportations were underway when the order was issued and that he believed one plane had taken off, but had come back.

Minutes after the hearing ended, the Associated Press reported that five charter buses pulled up to a plane parked at an airport near the border in Harlingen, Texas, where deportation flights are known to depart from.

Efrén C. Olivares, vice president of litigation and legal strategy at the National Immigration Law Center, said the deportations could have caused the children “irreperable harm.”

“In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala,” he said in a statement following the ruling.

“We are heartened the Court prevented this injustice from occurring before hundreds of children suffered irreparable harm. We are determined to continue fighting to protect the interest of our plaintiffs and all class members until the effort is enjoined permanently,” he added.

The ORR, which lies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said the deportations were the result of an agreement between the U.S. and Guatemala. Attorneys representing the children were sent memos informing them that the “Government of Guatemala has requested the return of certain unaccompanied alien children in federal custody for the purposes of reunifying the UAC with suitable family members.”

“This communication is provided as advance notice that removal proceedings may be dismissed to support the prompt repatriation of the child,” the memo, which was reviewed by TIME, said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller criticized Sooknanan for blocking the deportations.

“The minors have all self-reported that their parents are back home in Guatemala. But a Democrat judge is refusing to let them reunify with their parents,” he wrote on X.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

King Donald & cronies are preying on the most vulnerable so as to maximize their deportation stats.

Judge Halts Deportation of Hundreds of Unaccompanied Children
Immigrant groups are seeking a restraining order to block the abrupt deportation of hundreds of children to Guatemala.

https://time.com/7313641/deportation-guatemala-ice-judge-blocked

Houston Chronicle: ICE reportedly visiting homes of Houston migrant children, sparking fear of sponsor deportations

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Alexa Sendukas, managing attorney at the Galveston-Houston Immigration Project, said in recent weeks, 18 of her clients sponsoring unaccompanied children have reported ICE officers in plain clothes have visited or called their homes, prompting fear and concern they are being targeted for deportation.

The visits have also been reported in recent weeks across the U.S as an effort to crack down on potential human trafficking, The Washington Post reported.

Sendukas said the visits — which in some cases, clients have told her involved ICE agents asking sponsors for their immigration status — are concerning because sponsors and their homes have already gone through rigorous vetting by contractors part of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Most clients have reported that four ICE officers visit their homes, with 3 men and 1 woman, and ask varying questions, from asking how the child is doing in school to wanting to speak to the child and see their bedroom, Sendukas said. She added all the unaccompanied minors have already had removal orders dimissed through immigration court, or are in proceeding to have them dismissed.

But the immigration status of the children’s sponsors, whom the immigration project does not represent, is not entirely known, Sendukas said.

“If ICE does go after undocumented sponsors, we’re looking at the next version of family separation, and it will be devastating,” she said. “We have young children who are going to be irreparably harmed.”

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/trending/article/ice-dhs-welfare-checks-migrant-children-houston-20295086.php