Judge steps up to block ICE's kidnapping of Guatemalan kids

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On Sunday, the US government tried to kidnap hundreds of Guatemalan children and sneak them out of the country.

This gross abuse was only halted by the quick action of Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who was on duty for emergency claims at the US District Court of the District of Columbia. Inside 36 hours, she issued a temporary restraining order, held a hearing, certified the affected children as a class so that none of them could be removed from the country, and demanded five status reports from the government. She didn’t let go until the Justice Department confirmed in writing that every single one of the children had been deplaned and transferred from the custody of the Department of Homeland Security to the care of Health and Human Services.

It was a remarkable display of judicial tenacity. It was also a testament to how thoroughly the Justice Department has shredded its credibility with the courts in just eight months.

Snatching kids from their beds

Shortly after 1am Sunday, lawyers for 10 undocumented Guatemalan children moved for a temporary restraining order barring their deportation. The children arrived here without a parent and have been in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a humanitarian agency located inside the Department of Health and Human Services (and not the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement).

Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), unaccompanied minor immigrants must be housed in the least restrictive environment that will keep them safe, and so most of these kids were living in foster care and group homes as their immigration proceedings and asylum claims were processed.

But over the weekend, ICE showed up and started grabbing up the kids. Here’s an email sent at 10:45pm on Saturday demanding that foster care facilities prepare the children for deportation in two to four hours:

Lauren Flores, Legal Director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR), testified about the utter panic this unleashed:

At all of the shelters visited in the middle of the night, ProBAR staff witnessed children who had been pulled out of their beds. They were confused and scared. At Hands of Healing Los Fresnos, one young girl was extremely distraught, crying and repeatedly saying that she could not go back to Guatemala. At New Hope McAllen, one young girl was so scared that she vomited and asked to speak with a clinician. At Urban Strategies Alamo, one young teenager was scared that he might end up murdered like one of his family members. At Compass Connection in Harlingen, an attorney was able to meet with only one child. None of these children’s parents in their home country had requested their return.

By 4am Sunday, Judge Sooknanan issued an ex parte order forbidding the government from deporting the 10 named minor plaintiffs and scheduling a hearing for 3pm to consider the rest of the potential class.

After lawyers notified the court that children were already being loaded onto planes in Texas, the judge moved the hearing up to 12:30pm and issued a preliminary class certification barring deportation of any Guatemalan children covered by the TVPRA.

The shadow of JGG

At the hearing, the government was represented by Deputy Attorney General Drew Ensign. Ensign previously appeared before Chief Judge James Boasberg in the DC case captioned JGG v. Trump, which challenged deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador.

During a hearing on March 15, Judge Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order and ordered the government to turn around any planes in the air carrying Venezuelan detainees. When Judge Boasberg asked Ensign if he knew of any flights taking off, Ensign said he did not. Judge Boasberg then paused the proceedings so that Ensign could convey the order to DHS and stop any further flights.

Notwithstanding the court’s explicit order, the government did not turn around a flight of detainees that was already in the air. And during the pause in the proceedings when Ensign was supposed to be ensuring that DHS would comply with the ruling, two additional flights took off from Texas. A subsequent whistleblower report alleged that Ensign was well aware that the flights were taking off imminently and simply lied to the court.

Judge Boasberg was unable to stop DHS from ren