A 10-year-old girl was “tired and worried” when she was taken out of bed at 4:30 a.m. and prepared for an abrupt flight from her shelter in Texas to Guatemala.
A 17-year-old boy was put on a plane, scared and praying to God to protect him as he feared returning to violence in the country he fled, and where his single mother cannot protect him.
Another young girl was so scared she vomited.
A series of harrowing affidavits in court filings on Wednesday detail the Trump administration’s middle-of-the-night operation to fly dozens of Guatemalan children to their home country — described by their attorneys and the children themselves.
After a fast-paced legal battle over the weekend, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from expelling hundreds of Guatemalan children who are in government custody, foster programs and long-term shelters after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone.
The government had not obtained legal permission to remove them, according to their lawyers, but at least 76 children were already on planes and sitting on a tarmac as they waited for a judge’s response to a lawsuit to keep them in the country.
The children — who are under the care of the Office of Refugee Settlement at the Department of Health and Human Services — will remain in federal custody while yet another high-profile legal challenge to the president’s anti-immigration agenda continues.
In court documents supporting a request to block their removal, more than a dozen Guatemalan teenagers described their overwhelming fear of returning to their home country.
They describe childhoods in neglect, threats of extortion and gang violence against them or their families, and returning to homes or government shelters where they were abused or trafficked.
“I am certain the people there who hurt me and threatened to kill me before will once again hurt me and will carry out threats to kill me,” one 16-year-old wrote.
A 16-year-old LGBT+ child who is seeking asylum in the United States said they fear rape and forced marriage if they were sent back.
“If I had to return to Guatemala,” the teenager wrote in court documents, “I would kill myself.”
Several children submitted court documents describing the moments they were moved out of their shelters in the middle of the night before boarding buses and planes bound for Guatemala, only to turn around and remain in government custody under fear that they would be imminently removed.
Lauren Flores, legal director with the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, described seeing a young girl in a shelter who was “extremely distraught, crying and repeatedly saying that she could not go back to Guatemala.”
At another shelter, one girl “was so scared that she vomited and asked to speak with a clinician,” according to Flores.
In another shelter, a teenager was “scared that he might end up murdered like one of his family members,” Flores wrote.
After shelter workers at a Texas facility woke them up in the early morning hours on August 31 and explained the children there would be sent to their home country, “I wondered why, because I knew that I had a right not to be deported and speak with a judge,” one 16-year-old wrote.
“I felt like, ‘wow, I have rights,’” the teen wrote. “When I was packing up my personal belongings, I was thinking about everything that could happen to me with all the crime in Guatemala. I was worried that I would be killed.”
The teen said their sister was murdered in Guatemala last year.
“I am afraid that the same thing could happen to me if I am returned,” the teen wrote. “My mother is in Guatemala, but she does not want me to return. She does not have the resources to care for me. My father is not a part of my life. I have no other family who could receive me.”
A van arrived to whisk them away to an airport around 4 a.m., but the shelter director told the children a judge had blocked their removal.
“I was so relieved,” the teen wrote. “The impact is real. I feel totally traumatized. I don’t even know how to explain it.”
A supervisor woke up one 17-year-old inside another Texas facility at 2 a.m. August 31, according to court documents.
“I started to pray to God because I was scared and wanted to stay in the shelter,” the teenager wrote.
A bus driver wouldn’t say where a group of children was going, and they arrived at an airport around 5:30 a.m., according to the 17-year-old.
One plane took off around noon, then returned to the tarmac moments later, according to the teen’s affidavit. The bus left the airport around 6:30 p.m., and the children returned to the shelter around 8 p.m.
“I only felt safe once they took me to the shelter at night,” the teenager wrote. “I was worried and scared at the same time. I didn’t feel like I could cry or laugh about anything because I was so confused about what would happen to me.”
In the days that followed, “I don’t feel like I can have fun anymore or play in the gym,” the teen wrote.
“I can’t focus on anything because I just keep thinking about them trying to return to Guatemala. I feel depressed.”
The last child was placed back at a shelter at around 1:30 a.m. September 1, more than 24 hours after lawyers began scrambling.
Several children and attorneys also refuted the Trump administration’s claims that the children’s parents had requested their return to Guatemala.
Teenagers wrote how their parents explicitly did not want them there, while two parents described strange communications from government officials explaining that their children were going to return to the country despite never requesting them to do so.
“The administration’s position that it was merely cooperating with the Guatemalan government to return children to their parents is belied by the facts,” attorneys wrote. “Even if the administration’s contentions regarding its coordination with the Guatemalan government are true, any such coordination does not excuse the government’s illegal action and does nothing to change its obligation to provide unaccompanied minors with the process unambiguously due to them under the law.”
The Independent has requested comment from Homeland Security.
A judge will hold a hearing on September 10 to determine whether to continue blocking the children’s removal.
