Phoenix, AZ – Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project Deputy Director Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu said:
“Late Saturday night, on August 30, 2025, with little to no notice, the United States government sent private transportation contractors to shelters housing unaccompanied immigrant children with the intent to take away and illegally repatriate our child clients to Guatemala against their wishes. Around 9:45 we received notification from partners that the U.S. government was initiating unlawful removal of Guatemalan children across the country. This notice gave us only a few hours to act. Private contractors who transport people for ICE arrived at the first shelter mere hours later, and they continued to appear at shelters across Arizona throughout the night, attempting to remove our clients, with little to no notice to our attorneys. Our team was up until 4 AM on August 31, 2025, contacting everyone we could think of and advocating to ensure that none of our clients were taken in the dead of night in violation of their rights.
“Most of the 53 children on whose behalf we are acting have expressed a fear of return to Guatemala, due to abandonment, abuse, neglect, violence, or trafficking, and all of them have the right to pursue legal relief in the United States. None of them have asked the government to send them back and all of them have the right to be heard before an Immigration Judge. No Immigration Judge has determined whether it’s safe for these kids to go back, and a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order barring the government from enacting this plan, which was openly defied across the country.
“We filed a lawsuit on behalf of these 53 children. One plaintiff is a 12-year-old girl who suffers from chronic kidney disease and relies on dialysis to stay alive. Her illness is severe enough that she will require a kidney transplant. She has already been in ORR care for more than a year and is seeking asylum in the United States. She fears that she will not receive the care she needs in Guatemala.
“A second plaintiff is 17 years old and pregnant. In Guatemala, she never completed elementary school because she was forced to leave school to work for her father in the fields. She has tld her legal team that her father became angry when he found out about her pregnancy and will likely not accept her back home, and if she is returned to Guatemala, she will not have access to prenatal, childbirth, or postnatal care for herself or her newborn baby, nor will she have any way to support herself and her child.
“Two more plaintiffs are a 10-year-old boy and his 3-year-old sister. He told his attorney that he does not want to go back to Guatemala, and he does not have family there. He repeatedly expressed happiness that we could help him, sharing ‘I have an attorney [who] is going to help me!’
“We are deeply concerned by the government’s attempts to remove children to Guatemala who are here alone and unable to advocate for themselves and were left in the dark about the government’s intentions and plan. The fact that the government sought to implement this plan under the darkness of night, in the wee hours of the morning, over a holiday weekend suggests that the government intended to minimize the ability of children to obtain legal support in protection of their rights. The government was attempting to violate the law, bypass due process, and forcibly return children to the danger they fled – in some cases, to life-threatening harm.
“Make no mistake – the government’s actions are targeting vulnerable children. We call on every single person in this country to stand up and speak out to protect these children.”