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 Trump, Kelly said his administration’s plans likely violate the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthoriz

See Full Page