Trinidad-born US Judge blocks deportation of unaccompanied children

A Trinidad-born U.S. federal judge has blocked an attempt by the Trump administration to deport unaccompanied Guatemalan children, halting flights that were already preparing to take off over the holiday weekend.

On August 31, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who was born in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the deportation of 10 unaccompanied minors, ages 10 to 17, and potentially hundreds more in federal custody. The ruling came after the National Immigration Law Center filed an emergency request, arguing that the government was bypassing legal safeguards for migrant children. The order will remain in effect for 14 days.

“I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” Sooknanan said during the hastily scheduled hearing in Washington, D.C.

The decision immediately stopped deportation flights from Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, a major hub for removals. Minutes after the ruling, five charter buses that had brought dozens of children to a waiting plane were ordered to return. The Justice Department later confirmed that all 76 children who had been prepared for deportation would be returned to shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.

“This idea that on a long weekend in the dead of night they would wake up these vulnerable children and put them on a plane irrespective of the constitutional protections that they had is something that should shock the conscience of all Americans,” said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center.