Guatemala says it suggested that U.S. send its unaccompanied migrant children home

After planes with Guatemalan children were loaded in the U.S., then prevented from taking off by a federal judge’s decision to temporarily halt the children’s removal, the Guatemalan government said on Aug. 31 that it was responsible for recently proposing to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that the unaccompanied Guatemalan minors be returned to their home country.

In a statement published to the social media platform X on the evening of Aug. 31, the same day as the judge’s decision, the Guatemalan government indicated it wanted to prevent the children from staying in shelters and detention centers and that it supports coordinated action to reunify Guatemalan children with their families.

The Guatemalan government has plans to identify the needs of each of the Guatemalan children and intends to include them in social programs in their home country, the government stated. All actions that have been taken in regards to the unaccompanied minors have taken the children’s human rights into account and have complied with due process, the government alleged.

NPR asked the Guatemalan government how many children it had requested be returned from the U.S., and whether all of their parents have asked that the children be returned to Guatemala, as a U.S. attorney indicated in a hearing on Aug. 31. The Guatemalan government did not immediately respond and did not directly address those questions in its statement.

The statement appears to contain a factual error. The Guatemalan government said it suggested the idea of sending back the unaccompanied minors to Noem while she was in the country in July. But Noem visited Guatemala on June 26, after making stops in Costa Rica, Honduras and Paraguay in a tour of Central America.

During that visit, Noem and Guatemalan Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez signed agreements, including one to potentially allow people not originally from Guatemala to seek asylum in Guatemala instead of the U.S., despite the fact that U.S. law permits asylum seekers to remain as they comply with court proceedings relevant to their case. Noem was also pictured on June 26 watching people being deported from the U.S. while at La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City, with U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala Tobin Bradley.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NPR regarding whether Guatemala had suggested that the unaccompanied minors be returned to Guatemala while Noem was visiting the country in June.

Some attorneys representing the Guatemalan children set to be deported disagree with Guatemala’s statement that the process to remove the unaccompanied minors has not disregarded their rights. In the attempt to send children away without allowing them to first finish pursuing their asylum claims, lawyers for the National Immigration Law Center, the law firm representing some of the Guatemalan children in the U.S., believe the U.S. has violated both federal laws and the U.S. constitution.

“In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala,” said Efrén C. Olivares, the Vice President of Litigation at the National Immigration Law Center.

The U.S. district court issuance of an emergency Temporary Restraining Order on Aug. 31 prevented the government from removing any unaccompanied Guatemalan minors in U.S. custody for the next 14 days. The National Immigration Law Center has vowed to continue defending the Guatemalan children’s right to stay in the U.S.