Trump Push to Deport Guatemalan Kids Halted by Federal Judge (1)

President Donald Trump can’t immediately deport Guatemalan children while they litigate their legal claims to stay in the US, a federal judge ruled.

The group of unaccompanied children are entitled to a preliminary injunction that stops the administration from deporting them, and to certification of a narrowed proposed class, said Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the US District Court for the District of Columbia in a Thursday opinion.

The children were “roused from their beds in the middle of the night” just before midnight Saturday of Labor Day weekend, Aug. 30, and driven to an airport, where some were loaded onto planes, said Kelly. Their lawyers, made aware of the “hasty operation” while it was unfolding, filed the lawsuit seeking emergency relief that Sunday at 1 a.m.

“There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return,” said Kelly. None of those that were located had asked for their children to come back to Guatemala, the judge said in barring the children’s removal.

The children deserve injunctive relief because they’re likely to succeed on the merits of their statutory claim. Plaintiffs, who contend that defendants’ “reunification” plan upends that statutory structure by removing them without complying with the TVPRA’s requirements, “very likely have the better of the argument,” the judge said.

Class Recognition

Kelly, a 2017 appointee of President Donald Trump, provisionally certified a class under rule 23(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure because plaintiffs’ proposed class “far exceeds” the numerosity threshold of at least 40 members.

The plaintiffs meet the commonality requirement because they identify common questions “susceptible to generalized, class-wide proof” that are likely to resolve important issues, Kelly said.

Plaintiffs have also satisfied the typicality and adequacy-of-representation requirements, he said.

“Both the named Plaintiffs and the putative class members press claims deriving from the same conduct: Defendants expelling them from the United States under a ‘reunification’ plan” that allegedly violates procedures delineated by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, Kelly said. “And those claims rest on a common legal theory: the TVPRA prohibits Defendants’ conduct.”

Kelly declined to provisionally certify a class covering unaccompanied alien children from all non-contiguous countries in Office of Refugee Resettlement’s custody, however, explaining that Trump administration has represented that it has no plans to deport other unaccompanied children within that broader group of countries.

Public Interest

The irreparable harm” to befall these children is “obviously imminent,” in part given how they were muscled out of the country—"unannounced, in the middle of the night, and with just a few hours of notice to the caretakers and even less to their lawyers,” Kelly said.

The public interest is served, he said, because the public “has a ‘substantial’ interest ‘in having governmental agencies abide by the federal laws that govern their existence and operations.’”

The National Immigration Law Center, the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center, and the National Center for Youth Law represent the plaintiffs.

The case is L.G.M.L. v. Noem, 2025 BL 334280, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-02942, 9/18/25.