A federal judge on Thursday blocked the U.S. government from deporting Guatemalan children who don't have orders of deportation or voluntary departure, saying a Trump administration effort to remove them earlier this month was based on a faulty justification.

Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was appointed to the bench by President Trump, wrote in a 43-page ruling that the administration's argument that it was trying to reunite a group of Guatemalan kids with family members in Guatemala "crumbled like a house of cards."

The legal controversy started after the Trump administration attempted to expel more than 70 unaccompanied Guatemalan children over Labor Day weekend, prompting lawyers to file an emergency lawsuit in the overnight hour

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