WASHINGTON (TNND) -- A federal judge temporarily blocked a flight on Sunday that the U.S. government had loaded with children to be sent back to their home country of Guatemala.
This case is the latest in the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration.
As of now, hundreds of Guatemalan children, who arrived in the U.S. unaccompanied, will stay in the country while the legal battle continues over the next few weeks.
"I do not want there to be any ambiguity," said Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan. Sooknanan said her ruling applies broadly to Guatemalan minors who arrived in the country without parents.
As the ruling was finalized, five charter buses arrived at an airport close to the border in Harlingen, Texas.
Five charter buses carried passengers who were to enter a part of the airport restricted to government planes, which includes deportation flights. The passengers on the bus were wearing clothing specifically issued in government-run shelters for migrant children.
The Trump administration insists it is returning the children to their parents or guardians who have sought their return.
However, some lawyers representing the minors say, regardless of the situation, the authorities still would have to follow a legal process that they did not.
Sunday's court decision is only one of many cases regarding migrant children that are taking place across the country.
In Arizona, the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project brought about a lawsuit where one of its clients is a 12-year-old asylum-seeker who has chronic kidney disease and needs dialysis to stay alive until they can receive a kidney transplant.
Two other plaintiffs, a 10-year-old boy and his 3-year-old sister, do not have family in Guatemala and claim they do not want to return, according to the organization.
As the legal battle took place in the U.S., families started to gather at an air base in Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala.
Migrant children who arrive in the U.S. alone, without parents or guardians accompanying them, are routinely handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The children often live in government-supervised shelters or with foster care families until they are released to a sponsor living within the U.S. In most cases, the children are released to a relative living in the country.
Many migrants from Guatemala try to request asylum or use other legal ways to stay in the U.S.
It is still not clear whether the planes departed from the U.S. Drew Ensign, a government lawyer, told the Washington judge one plane might have taken off but returned.
The judge said she was awakened at 2:30 a.m. by the children's lawyers to address the emergency filing.
She then spent hours trying to reach federal attorneys.
"I have the government attempting to remove unaccompanied minors from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising," Sooknanan said at the hearing. She commented later at the hearing, "Absent action by the courts, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to very dangerous situations."
This will not be the end of the Trump administration's efforts to send Venezuelan children back. The Trump administration is currently planning to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children, according to a letter sent on Friday from Democratic Sen. Of Oregon, Ron Wyden, who arrived in the U.S. unaccompanied. The Guatemalan government has said it's ready to take them in.