BREAKING: Judge Kelly (Trump appointee) bars the Trump administration from deporting Guatemalan kids in HHS custody

[In It to Win It]

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/18/guatemalan-children-deportation-ruling-00570828

BREAKING: Judge Kelly (Trump appointee) bars the Trump administration from deporting Guatemalan kids in HHS custody, finding the claim they were “reunifying” kids with their parents “crumbled like a house of cards” upon review. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) 2025-09-18T14:27:18.945Z

Trump allies attacked the first judge who blocked this deportation, Biden appointee Sparkle Sooknanan, under the false claim she was blocking kids from reunifying with their parents. They repeatedly highlighted her foreign heritage. Wonder what they'll say about Kelly.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) 2025-09-18T14:29:27.519Z

This is the claim that the Trump-appointed Judge Tim Kelly said "crumbled like a house of cards."

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) 2025-09-18T14:33:49.595Z

NEW: A Trump-appointed federal judge says the Trump administration falsely claimed to be "reunifying" Guatemalan children with their parents when they launched a middle-of-the-night deportation operation that violated the law.

w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social

www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) 2025-09-18T16:16:08.527Z

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. It is NOT a good idea to lie to a judge-The judge is calling out the DOJ for pushing false narrative

Link to tweet

BREAKING: Judge Timothy Kelly just ruled against Trump's inhumane attempts to send unaccompanied immigrant children to Guatemala, without parental consent.

He said that the Trump Administration's reasoning "crumbled like a house of cards."

He's a Trump-appointed Judge! So tell me MAGA, why is wrong not to know exactly who is taking care of these children in America but perfectly fine to just send them to Guatemala where we don't even know if they have people who will care for them or if they will get trafficked?

[flvegan]

2. But...but he has cash buyers for them.

You know, like in the Epstein files.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Deadline: Legal Blog--Trump-appointed judge says administration's court claim 'crumbled like a house of cards'

A judge appointed by the president in his first term said a government claim in seeking to send children to Guatemala “turned out not to be true.”

Trump-appointed judge says administration’s court claim ‘crumbled like a house of cards’

— Ruth Ghiorzi (@ladyruth4u.bsky.social) 2025-09-19T18:35:21Z

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-judge-send-children-guatemala-immigration-rcna232405

A legal theme of President Donald Trump’s second term is judges not being able to trust his administration’s statements in court. This theme has been especially pronounced in immigration-related cases, where the government has taken some of its most aggressive and lawbreaking stances.

It’s against this backdrop that one of Trump’s own judicial appointees said Thursday that an official explanation offered in court “crumbled like a house of cards.”......

His 43-page opinion contains haunting details, including excerpts of declarations from some of the children who warned of dangerous fates that would await them. One of them said “the conditions she would return to in Guatemala would cause her to kill herself,” Kelly wrote.

The judge’s stern accounting wasn’t limited to the “house of cards” remark. He wrote elsewhere that Trump officials “misstate the legal standard” and that their conduct in deeming children eligible for sending to Guatemala suggested “that they are not applying their criteria accurately, consistently, or in ways that reflect good faith.” He further criticized the “rushed, seemingly error-laden operation to send unaccompanied alien children back to their home countries,” calling it one of the things that federal law seeks to prevent.

The judge wrote that officials’ conduct doesn’t “inspire confidence that they themselves are convinced that they have the authority to proceed as they would like.” If they were convinced of their authority, the judge wondered, then “why exercise it in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend with nothing but a late-night (or early-morning) notice to the children’s caretakers and advocates?”

Why, indeed.

At a time when the administration is bending or breaking the law across various facets of American life, Kelly’s ruling is a reminder that at least some judges have served as a bulwark, and that they stand ready to apply the law to lawless government actions when they’re challenged in court.