Court blocks deportation flights of unaccompanied minors to Guatemala

Geoff Bennett:

Tonight, dozens of Guatemalan migrant children are back in federal custody after a late-night court order temporarily halted their deportation. The ruling came after the unaccompanied minors had already been boarded on planes bound for Guatemala.

Lawyers filed an emergency motion overnight, prompting the judge to be awakened at 2:30 Sunday morning to intervene, saying — quote — "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."

For now, a temporary restraining order blocks the deportations of hundreds of such children for at least two weeks.

We're joined now by Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, which is representing some of the migrant children.

Welcome back to the program.

Kica Matos, President, National Immigration Law Center:

Thank you for having me.

Geoff Bennett:

So the U.S. has deported unaccompanied migrant children before. So what makes this case in particular stand out?

Kica Matos:

What makes this case stand out in the most egregious ways is that our government in the dead of night ordered the shelters to wake these children up between 2:00 and 4:00 in the morning to put them on buses so that they could be transported to Texas, the airport, loaded on planes and deported to Guatemala without making sure that these kids avail themselves of the legal protections and the constitutional rights that they have.

Now, understand, none of these kids had received a final deportation order. These are kids whose cases are going through the system. And our government decided that they were going to simply yank away these legal and constitutional protections and send them to Guatemala.

The youngest kid that we spoke with is 7 years old. These are all unaccompanied children, who are particularly vulnerable. That is what makes this case so outrageous.

Geoff Bennett:

And what's the argument that you're presenting on behalf of the children that you're representing?

Kica Matos:

Our argument is really quite simple, right?

It is that the government is engaging in lawless and reckless behavior and it is stripping these kids of the constitutional protections that they have and the laws that our country has in the books to make sure that these kids have the right to go before a judge and have the right to legal representation.

Geoff Bennett:

Some of these children are on the cusp of turning 18, and the Guatemalan government welcomed the return partly out of concern that, once they turn 18, they'd be transferred to ICE detention. And the Guatemalan government says it's ready to receive as many as 150 children a week, arguing that that's better than seeing them transferred to ICE detention here in the U.S.

Is that an acceptable resolution, in your view?

Kica Matos:

It is not an acceptable resolution, in our view.

Let me share what we have learned from the kids that we spoke to. And we have affidavits from these children. Each and every one of these children did not want to be returned to Guatemala. They feared the possibility that they would be once again threatened with violence. Some of these kids received death threats. Some of these kids have been neglected by their parents. Some of these kids have faced tremendous amounts of trauma and abuse.

And our position is really simple. These kids have legal rights and they want to avail themselves of legal rights. The government's position is spurious and, quite frankly, ridiculous. And what I will say is, if these kids did want to return to Guatemala to be reunited with the parents, that is a decision that the judge makes, not the federal government.

Geoff Bennett:

What can you tell us about the nearly 2,000 migrant children who are in government custody, HHS custody? A large percentage of them are from Guatemala. Is that right?

Kica Matos:

Yes, my understanding is that many of these kids are from Guatemala. These kids are from Central America. They're from South America. They're from all over the globe.

And they're all — what unifies these kids is that they're all uniquely vulnerable, and they all have the rights to protections, legal protections that our government is meant to afford them.

Geoff Bennett:

Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump's hard-line immigration approach, blamed the migrants' predicament on the lax immigration policies of the Biden administration.

He said: "These are smuggled miners orphaned in America by the Biden administration that Democrats are refusing to allow back home with their families."

What particular concerns do you have about the migrant children in federal custody, given the Trump administration's overall approach to immigration enforcement?

Kica Matos:

Well, let's remember that Stephen Miller is the architect of the family separation plan under the first Trump administration.

But it's galling to us, and now they're wrapping their defense of what is indefensible by saying they were concerned about these kids and they want to ensure that they're reunited with their families.

But what the government was in essence doing was yanking away the legal protections that these vulnerable kids have. It should shock the conscience of all Americans that our government in the dead of night was targeting vulnerable children and trying to strip them of the protections that they have.

And the final thing that I would say is, this really exposes the hypocrisy of our government right now, because, for the longest time, they were saying, we're going after the most outrageous criminal immigrants, and that's who we're targeting for deportation, when, in fact, this weekend shows us that they know no bounds.

And their intention was to yank away their rights and send them to a country where they feared for their lives.

Geoff Bennett:

Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, thanks again for joining us this evening.

Kica Matos:

Thank you for having me.