Judge Blocks Trump Admin From Reuniting Alien Kids And Parents

Activist attorneys trying to prevent the U.S. government from sending around 600 Guatemalan children back home to Guatemala to be with their Guatemalan parents got greenhorn Judge Sparkle Sooknanan to side with them over the Labor Day holiday weekend. Sooknanan, a Joe “Autopen” Biden appointee, has only been on the bench for eight months. An immigrant herself, Sooknanan was born in Trinidad and Tobago and has been a U.S. citizen since 2009.   

The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights and the National Immigration Law Center rushed to U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia Sunday with an emergency complaint seeking class status for the children and requesting a temporary restraining order, asking the court to block the Department of Homeland (DHS) from sending detained children to their home country — a move they expected to happen over the weekend.

Sooknanan allowed the class action status (the case, which started with 10 specific children, will now cover the 600) and issued a temporary restraining order preventing DHS from removing children in the class of this case from the U.S. for 14 days while the parties argue the matter in court.   

The DHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) had apparently already loaded 76 children on an airplane Sunday when it learned of the order. The children were deplaned and returned to ORR custody.

The activist attorneys would rather keep children in U.S. detention, separated from their families and home country, than reunite them with all that is familiar. They oppose removing the children because they “will lose the opportunity to seek permanent status in the United States in immigration court,” the complaint reads, adding the children “fear persecution in Guatemala,” and if they are removed before they have a chance to make a case in court, “they are at risk of persecution, torture, or death.”

Yet White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has noted that children are returning to their parents, and it is totally implausible that the parents and family members of some 600 children are waiting to kill their kids when they come home.

Let us not forget, not long ago, these same leftist activists were screaming about “kids in cages.” Members of Congress visited the border and staged photo opportunities, complete with crocodile tears over illegally present children.

After years of propaganda claiming children in detention were mistreated, the court papers admit the conditions children live in while in U.S. custody meet their needs. If the children are sent back to Guatemala, they “are at risk of not receiving care and access to basic needs such as shelter, food, and education they would otherwise be legally required to provide in [Office of Refugee Resettlement] custody,” the complaint asserts.

Now the left has flip-flopped, begging the court to keep the children in detention, revealing what we already knew — it was never about “kids in cages.” The left wants unvetted immigrants to settle in the U.S., even if they are not old enough to be self-sufficient.

Perhaps it was a miraculous stroke of luck that the National Immigration Law Center managed to get Sooknanan to hear the case. While working at the Department of Justice, she played a part in searching for a legal “federal hook” to prevent parents from speaking out at school board meetings, The Federalist previously reported.

In March, Sooknanan ruled against Trump, ordering him to reinstate Democrat Susan Grundmann to a post on the Federal Labor Relations Authority that Trump had fired her from.

In August, Sooknanan ruled against Trump’s directive to restrict foreign nationals entering the U.S. who may commit crimes or threaten national security.

It is a disservice to these children for a partisan, activist judge to hear this case.

We can only speculate about how the children sitting on an airplane felt on Sunday. It is likely some, if not all, were excited to see their families and to be surrounded by the culture and language they were immersed in from birth.

Many likely accepted the new plan for their lives until Sooknanan yanked them back into detention at the request of activist attorneys who are playing politics with the lives of children instead of helping them get settled and living within the legal realities of international borders they should have never crossed.

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.