Judge blocks Trump administration from deporting Guatemalan migrant children

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump's administration from immediately deporting Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country, the latest step in a court struggle over one of the most sensitive issues in Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly comes after the Republican administration’s Labor Day weekend attempt to remove Guatemalan migrant children who were living in government shelters and foster care.

Trump administration officials said they were seeking to reunify children with parents who wanted them returned home. “But that explanation crumbled like a house of cards about a week later," Kelly, who was nominated by Trump, wrote. “There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return.”

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement insisted on the administration's initial claims that parents requested being reunited with their children. “This judge is blocking efforts to REUNIFY CHILDREN with their families. Now these children will have to go to shelters," McLaughlin said. "All just to ‘get Trump.’ This is disgraceful and immoral.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson in a statement said that “The lower court wrongly interjected itself into this effort" of reuniting families.

Advocates for the children also submitted a whistleblower account to the court that suggests many of the children who were found eligible for deportation had likely been victims of child abuse, like death threats, gang violence, and human trafficking, Kelly noted in his order.

“The court saw through the government’s repeated misrepresentations of critical facts to try to justify the indefensible targeting of vulnerable children who would have faced danger if forcibly sent to other countries," Efrén C. Olivares, vice president of litigation & legal strategy at the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement.

There was already a temporary order in place preventing the removal of Guatemalan children. But that was set to expire Tuesday. Kelly granted a preliminary injunction extends that temporary protection indefinitely, although the government can appeal.

Kelly did rebuff advocates' push to block the removal of children from additional countries, though he said any attempt to remove those children in a similar way would likely be unlawful. Legal advocates working with Kids in Need of Defense visited Honduras last week and found government officials and nongovernmental organizations working “furiously” to receive as many as 400 children back from the United States.

There are also temporary restraining orders in separate cases in Arizona and Illinois, but those cases are much more narrow in the scope of children they cover, underlining the importance of the Washington case.

In a late-night operation Aug. 30, the administration notified shelters where migrant children traveling alone initially live after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border that they would be returning the children to Guatemala and that they needed to have the kids ready to leave in a matter of hours.

“Our clients were terrified—many had tear-soaked faces and some were visibly shaking with fear,” Mishan Wroe, directing attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, one of the plaintiff attorneys, said in a statement.

Contractors for Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked up the Guatemalan children from shelters and foster care and transported them to the airport. The government has said in court filings that it identified 457 children for possible removal to Guatemala although that list was eventually whittled down to 327. In the end, 76 got as far as boarding planes in El Paso and Harlingen, Texas, on Aug. 31 and were set to depart to Guatemala in what the government described as a first phase.

Bertilda López’s 17-year-old son was among those slated to be sent to Guatemala. Over Labor Day weekend, he called his family late at night to tell them he was being sent home and she drove through the night to get to the capital.

She expressed mixed feelings about the judge’s decision Thursday.

“As a mother I want him to be well, whether that’s sending him (home) or him being locked up there,” López said. “Maybe it’s better that they send him back because he’s really sad. The way things are there (in the U.S.), it bothers me that my son is locked up.”

Elisabeth Toca, who is sponsoring the boy and hopeful he will be allowed to stay, said she’s still hoping she will be able to get him out of U.S. custody and “give him a better life.”

Guatemala’s government declined to comment, saying only that it was an internal U.S. justice process.

Immigration and children’s advocates, who had been alerted of possible efforts to remove Guatemalan minors, immediately sued the Trump administration to prevent the children’s removal. The advocates argued that many of these children were fleeing abuse or violence in their home countries and that the government was bypassing longstanding legal procedures meant to protect young migrants from being returned to potentially abusive or violent places.

"This was a tragedy in the making that was barely averted thanks to the tireless efforts of advocates across the country who saw that children were being endangered and raised the alarm," Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, said in a statement.

Another federal judge in Washington granted advocates a temporary restraining order largely preventing the Trump administration from removing Guatemalan migrant children in its care except in limited circumstances where an immigration judge had already ordered their removal after reviewing their cases. That initial 14-day order was set to expire on Sunday, and then Kelly extended it through Tuesday to give him extra time to examine the case.

The government has argued that it has the right to return children in its care and it was acting at the behest of the Guatemalan government. But the government walked back an initial claim alleging the parents requested their children be sent back.

The Guatemalan government has said that it was concerned over minors in U.S. custody who were going to turn 18 and would then be at risk of being turned over to adult detention facilities.

Children who cross the southern border alone are generally transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services. The children usually live in a network of shelters across the country that are overseen by the resettlement office until they are eventually released to a sponsor, usually a relative.

After advocates got the temporary restraining order approved for Guatemalan children, they also asked the court to extend protections from deportation to children of other nationalities after hearing reports that the government was intending to remove Honduran children as well.

Associated Press writer Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City contributed to this report.

FILE - Relatives of unaccompanied minors deported from the United States await updates outside La Aurora International Airport, in Guatemala City, Aug. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)

FILE - People wait for loved ones from Guatemala deported from the United States outside La Aurora International Airport, in Guatemala City, Aug. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)

FILE - A relative of an unaccompanied minor deported from the United States reviews the list of those deported outside La Aurora International Airport, in Guatemala City, Aug. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)

President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Chequers near Aylesbury, England, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Thursday displayed apparent progress in the construction of a nuclear-powered submarine, with state media photos showing a largely completed hull, as leader Kim Jong Un condemned rival South Korea’s push to acquire the technology.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim visited a shipyard to inspect the construction of what the North describes as an 8,700-ton-class nuclear-propelled submarine, which the leader has called a crucial step in the modernization and nuclear armament of North Korea’s navy. The North has indicated it plans to arm the submarine with nuclear weapons, calling it a “strategic guided missile submarine” or a “strategic nuclear attack submarine.”

During the visit, Kim described South Korea’s efforts to acquire its own nuclear-powered submarine, which have been backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, as an “offensive act” that severely violates the North’s security and maritime sovereignty.

He said that the South Korean plan further underscores the need to advance and nuclear-arm North Korea’s navy, and claimed that the completion of his nuclear-powered submarine would be an “epoch-making” change in strengthening its nuclear war deterrent against what he called enemy threats.

The agency did not specify when Kim visited the shipyard but released photos showing him inspecting a huge, burgundy-colored vessel, coated with what appears to be anti-corrosion paint, under construction inside an assembly hall with senior officials and his daughter. It was the first time North Korean state media had released images of the submarine since March, when they mostly showed the lower sections of the vessel.

It was not immediately clear how close North Korea is to completing the vessel. But because submarines are typically built from the inside out, the release of what appears to be a largely completed hull suggests that many core components, including the engine and possibly the reactor, are already in place, said Moon Keun-sik, a submarine expert at Seoul’s Hanyang University.

“Showing the entire vessel now seems to indicate that most of the equipment has already been installed and it is just about ready to be launched into the water,” said Moon, a former submarine officer in the South Korean navy, who believes the North Korean submarine could possibly be tested at sea within months.

A nuclear-powered submarine was one item on a long wish list of sophisticated weaponry that Kim announced during a major political conference in 2021 to cope with what he called growing U.S.-led military threats. Other weapons were solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, spy satellites and multi-warhead missiles.

North Korea has conducted a series of tests to develop some of those systems and recently unveiled a new naval destroyer, which Kim hailed as a major step toward expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of the country’s nuclear forces.

If North Korea obtains a submarine capable of operating stealthily for extended periods and launching missiles from underwater, it would be a worrying development for its neighbors, as such launches would be difficult to detect in advance. But there have been questions about whether North Korea, a heavily sanctioned and impoverished country, could get resources and technology to build nuclear-powered submarines.

Some experts say North Korea’s recent alignment with Russia — including sending thousands of troops and military equipment to support President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine — may have helped it to receive crucial technologies in return.

While some analysts suspect North Korea may have sought a reactor from Russia, possibly from a retired Russian submarine, Moon said it's more likely that North Korea designed its own reactor, while possibly receiving some technological assistance from Russia.

During a summit with Trump in November, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called for U.S. support for South Korea’s efforts to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, while reaffirming a commitment to increase defense spending to ease the burden on the United States.

Trump later said that the United States is open to sharing closely held technology to allow South Korea to build a nuclear-powered submarine, but it’s not immediately clear where and when the vessel would be built and how Seoul would get the nuclear fuel and reactor technology required.

In a separate report, KCNA said Kim on Wednesday supervised a test of a new, long-range anti-air missile that was fired toward its eastern sea. South Korea’s Defense Ministry didn’t immediately comment on the launch.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have worsened in recent years as Kim accelerated his military nuclear program and deepened alignment with Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His government has repeatedly dismissed calls by Washington and Seoul to revive negotiations aimed at winding down his nuclear and missile programs, which derailed in 2019 following a collapsed summit with Trump during the American president’s first term.

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, a test of a long-range anti-air missile is launched towards its eastern sea, as seen from an undisclosed location in North Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

In this undated photo provided Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, with his daughter, inspects a nuclear-powered submarine under construction at an undisclosed location in North Korea. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

In this undated photo provided Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, third left, visits a shipyard as he inspects a nuclear-powered submarine under construction at an undisclosed location in North Korea. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

In this undated photo provided Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un inspects a nuclear-powered submarine under construction at an undisclosed location in North Korea. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

In this undated photo provided Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un inspects a nuclear-powered submarine under construction at an undisclosed location in North Korea. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)