THE BROWNSVILLE OBSERVER : 𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗧 𝗢𝗥𝗗𝗘𝗥 𝗕𝗟𝗢𝗖𝗞𝗦 𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗠𝗣'𝗦 𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗠𝗣𝗧 𝗧𝗢 𝗗𝗘𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧 𝟱 𝗕𝗨𝗦𝗟𝗢𝗔𝗗𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗞𝗜𝗗𝗦 𝗔𝗧 𝗩𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗬 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗔𝗜𝗥𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧 𝗦𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗔𝗬

by Jim Barton Sources: Border Report, NBC News

Five charter buses filled with Guatemalan children sat idling on the tarmac at Valley International Airport, just 25 miles from Brownsville, their passengers blocked from boarding a government plane chartered from GlobalX after a federal judge issued an emergency order halting deportation flights.(GlobalX, headquartered in Miami, Florida, operates the majority of flights of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deporting immigrants.)

The children, some as young as three, had already been led toward the aircraft, dressed in the color-coded clothing of government shelters, when word arrived that their removal could not proceed.

The intervention came after attorneys argued that the government was violating federal law by deporting hundreds of unaccompanied minors without due process and potentially sending them back into dangerous situations. Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, awakened at 2:30 a.m. to address the case, ruled that Guatemalan children in federal custody were protected by existing safeguards. “I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” she said, adding that absent court action, the minors would have been flown out of the country before sunrise.

This was just the latest episode in the Trump administration’s efforts to accelerate deportations and curtail protections for migrants, colliding with long-standing laws that provide unaccompanied children the right to seek asylum or other forms of relief. Lawyers for the children insisted the government was circumventing those protections under the guise of family reunification, while some parents in Guatemala received phone calls telling them their children were being sent back with little warning.

A 12-year-old asylum seeker with chronic kidney disease, who requires dialysis and is awaiting a transplant, was among those Trump wanted to remove.

The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment on the halted flights. Advocacy groups said they began hearing late last week that Homeland Security agents were interviewing Guatemalan children in shelters, asking about relatives back home while immigration court hearings for some minors were abruptly canceled. By Saturday evening, word spread that flights were being scheduled out of Harlingen and El Paso.

The mass removals, advocates argue, risk severing children from their lawyers and support networks while placing them back into the very conditions they fled.

For now, the children remain in the United States, their futures uncertain, as a legal battle over their fate continues in federal courts.