Lawyers from the Justice Department on Wednesday abandoned a claim they had made in court as they sought to deport dozens of unaccompanied Guatemalan children over a holiday weekend: that they were doing so at the behest of the children’s parents.
In federal court in Washington, government lawyers conceded that they had no evidence to support the contention that the children or their families had hoped to reunite in Guatemala, a claim that had been repeated by senior Trump administration officials last week.
The admission came after lawyers representing the children produced a report by the Guatemalan attorney general’s office that included interviews with 115 parents refuting the idea.
The hearing on Wednesday came in a case initially focused on more than 600 Guatemalan children who had entered the United States without a parent or guardian. The Trump administration had planned to hastily repatriate dozens of them on flights over the Labor Day weekend.
During an emergency hearing to stop the planes on Aug. 31, lawyers representing the children told Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, a Biden appointee who received the case during the holiday, that many feared for their safety in Guatemala and were doing everything possible to stay in the United States.
Many of the children, their lawyers argued, were loaded onto planes despite pending immigration proceedings and without any chance to challenge the repatriation. The children have been in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.
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The post Justice Dept. Reverses Course on Claims Guatemalan Children’s Parents Sought Their Return appeared first on New York Times.
