Late on Labor Day weekend, a tense and chaotic scene unfolded across Texas as dozens of Guatemalan children, some as young as elementary school age, were woken from their beds in shelters and rushed under the cover of darkness to airports in Harlingen and El Paso. The children, unaccompanied minors who had crossed the U.S. border seeking safety and opportunity, suddenly found themselves swept up in an attempt at expedited deportation—a move that would soon spark a legal and humanitarian standoff, illuminating deep fault lines in the nation’s immigration system.
According to reporting by The Associated Press and accounts from the American Bar Association’s South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR), the drama began just before midnight on Saturday. Calls started pouring in to ProBAR staff: Guatemalan children were being pulled from shelters, hurried onto buses, and driven through the night to a small border-town airport. For Laura Peña, ProBAR’s leader, it was a race against time. She kissed her three-month-old goodbye and sped to a shelter, fielding urgent calls about children in other facilities being loaded onto buses. When she arrived, she found children in the lobby with packed bags, including one boy who appeared “almost catatonic,” gripped by terror that he’d be murdered like a relative if he was sent back to Guatemala.
Jennifer Anzardo Valdes, director of children’s legal services at the International Rescue Committee, described how three teens living with foster families in Dallas were given just four hours’ notice. “They all spoke about how they were woken up in the middle of the night and told to pack a bag,” she told the AP. The sense of panic was palpable, not just among the children, but also among the attorneys and advocates scrambling to protect their rights.
For 24 hours, ProBAR attorneys worked around the clock, racing to shelters and the airport to intervene. Their efforts were not in vain. As Peña recounted, “We intervened for young girls at risk of trafficking, and we stood firm against a policy designed to strip children of their rights and procedures to ensure safety and due process.” Thanks to their advocacy, two children—including a 10-year-old client who feared being forced back to danger—became named plaintiffs in a national lawsuit challenging the government’s deportation policy.
Behind the scenes, a frantic legal battle was playing out. At 2:36 a.m. on Sunday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan was jolted awake by an emergency request to halt the flights. She left a voicemail for a Justice Department lawyer at 3:33 a.m., and by 4:22 a.m., she had issued an order stopping the deportations—at least for now. “I have the government attempting to remove unaccompanied minors from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising,” Judge Sooknanan said in court, according to the AP. She noted that “absent action by the courts all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to very dangerous situations.”
While some planes may have briefly taken off, all children were ultimately led off the aircraft after hours on the tarmac and returned to their shelters. The judge’s order blocking deportation of any Guatemalan children without final removal orders is set to expire in 14 days, leaving their fate uncertain and advocates bracing for further chaos.
The Trump administration, in the midst of a broader push for mass deportations, argued that the operation was conducted at the behest of the Guatemalan government. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller accused the judge of “effectively kidnapping these migrant children and refusing to let them return home to their parents in their home country.” Yet a Guatemalan government report, obtained by a U.S.-based human rights group and shared with the AP, painted a more complex picture. Of 115 families contacted by investigators, 50 said they wanted their children to stay in the United States, directly undermining administration claims. Another 59 families refused to cooperate, fearing that doing so would make it more likely their children would be sent home.
Lucrecia Prera, Guatemala’s child advocate who prepared the report, emphasized her office’s neutrality: “We want to clarify that we are respectful of and unconnected to the process happening in the United States. They are Guatemalan children and our obligation is to protect them.” One family told investigators that if their daughter was returned, they would do everything to get her out again, as her life was threatened.
The events of that weekend were not isolated. They echoed a similar episode in March, when hundreds of Venezuelans were deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, despite last-minute legal interventions. This time, however, attorneys managed to block the flights, at least temporarily, but the chaos has raised questions about the administration’s transparency and adherence to legal protections for migrants.
Many of the children affected had legal representation and had filed applications for relief in immigration court, as required by federal law. The Homeland Security Act and Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act recognize that unaccompanied children face unique challenges in the immigration system. The ABA emphasized in a statement that “all respondents in removal proceedings have a right to be represented by counsel,” and that special protections for unaccompanied minors require the government to provide legal representation “to the greatest extent practicable.”
“The safety of these at-risk children should remain the primary focus as things develop and an orderly court-reviewed process, which is now ongoing, is the best way to ensure this,” said ABA President Michelle A. Behnke. “Making sure children are protected is one of the most important roles that a lawyer can play.”
The roots of the Labor Day weekend drama stretch back to July, when Guatemala’s immigration chief announced plans to bring back 341 children from U.S. shelters—mainly those nearing their 18th birthday, to avoid their transfer to adult detention centers. Yet attorneys say the operation swept up much younger children, some still in elementary school, countering the claim that only those close to aging out were targeted. According to Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, some children were still in active immigration proceedings, and Guatemalan consulates had contacted their lawyers at the request of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo has stated that his administration is willing to receive “all unaccompanied minors, who wanted to return to Guatemala voluntarily,” and would welcome anyone ordered to leave the U.S. But the reality on the ground is far more complicated, with many families desperate for their children to remain in America, safe from violence and instability back home.
As the dust settles from a weekend of confusion and heartbreak, advocates and attorneys remain on high alert. The judge’s temporary order offers only a brief respite. For the children at the heart of this battle, the uncertainty continues, along with the hope that the legal system will provide the protection and due process they deserve.
