A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s plans to send unaccompanied Guatemalan children back to their home country, writing that the government’s insistence that it came at parents’ request “crumbled like a house of cards.”

Immigration lawyers raced to court in the middle of the night as the administration took steps to swiftly send back a group of Guatemalan migrant children over Labor Day weekend. 

The federal judge on emergency duty temporarily halted the deportations. The case was then assigned permanently to U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, whose new ruling Thursday indefinitely blocks the deportations as the case moves forward.  

Nominated to the bench by President Trump, Kelly said the administration’s plans likely violate the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), a 2008 law that sought to address concerns about unaccompanied migrant children in the government’s custody. 

“While Defendants plunged ahead in the middle of the night with their ‘reunification’ plan and then represented to a judge that a parent or guardian had requested each child’s return, that turned out not to be true,” Kelly wrote. 
 
“Such a rushed, seemingly error-laden operation to send unaccompanied alien children back to their home countries is one of the things that the TVPRA’s process prevents,” he continued. 

“This judge is blocking efforts to REUNIFY CHILDREN with their families,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Now these children will have to go to shelters. All just to ‘get Trump.’ This is disgraceful and immoral.”

In court, the administration contended the deportations would be lawful and that the judge had no authority to intervene.

“This case is uncomplicated, both legally and morally: where possible, unaccompanied alien children should be reunited with their parents or guardians. Their continued separation is a tragedy to be cured, not prolonged as Plaintiffs request classwide, regardless of a specific child’s best interest,” the Justice Department wrote in court filings.

The suit was filed by the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights and 10 Guatemalan unaccompanied minors aged 10 to 17 facing deportation. They are represented by the National Immigration Law Center. 

“Today’s court decision is a significant victory for the hundreds of children who are now safe from the Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to expel them from the United States,” Efrén Olivares, the law center’s vice president of litigation and legal strategy, said in a statement. 

“The court saw through the government’s repeated misrepresentations of critical facts to try to justify the indefensible targeting of vulnerable children who would have faced danger if sent to other countries,” Olivares continued. “This decision should send a clear message to the administration that they have no legal authority to circumvent the law to expel unaccompanied children without due process. As this litigation proceeds, we are determined to continue fighting and advocating for the best interests of all immigrant children.”

Kelly’s order blocks the administration from deporting the children or any other unaccompanied Guatemalan minor who has received neither a final removal order nor permission from the attorney general to voluntarily depart from the United States. 

Though a loss for the administration, the order is narrower than plaintiffs’ ask. Their proposal would’ve covered unaccompanied minors facing deportation from all other countries except Canada or Mexico, which are treated differently under the TVPRA. 

“There may be a better policy solution to this difficult, complex issue than what law requires,” Kelly wrote. “But a ‘policy disagreement with Congress,’ of course, is no license for the Executive ‘to ignore statutory mandates.’” 

Updated on Sept. 19 at 7:36 a.m. EDT