Lawyers and shelter workers across the United States are scrambling to prevent the government from deporting Honduran children in their custody, fearing a repeat of an aborted effort to remove dozens of Guatemalan children. Legal aid groups believe federal immigration authorities, with the support of the Honduran government, are preparing to remove unaccompanied minors from Honduras who are currently in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
Homeland Security investigators and representatives from the Honduran consulate have met with several Honduran children at an Arizona shelter in recent weeks, according to aid groups. Immigration court cases for Honduran children have also suddenly disappeared, following a pattern witnessed in the cases of Guatemalan children before the government attempted to remove them without a court hearing.
Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu, deputy director of the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, said: “It is truly astounding that the government is moving forward with this plan after they tried to do the same thing to children from Guatemala in the dead of night over Labor Day weekend.” She added that the only difference between the protected Guatemalan children and the targeted Honduran children is their country of origin, noting that existing laws protecting unaccompanied minors apply to all migrant children in government care.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting the targeted Guatemalan children, and the Florence Project has joined a lawsuit to preemptively block the removal of a dozen Honduran children. At least one Honduran child was asked by an immigration judge in August whether they wished to voluntarily return home, with the judge explaining that the child’s name was on a list provided to the court.
Aimee Korolev, deputy director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, said more than a dozen cases involving Honduran children have been abruptly wiped from immigration court dockets, with at least 19 having no future hearing. She expressed concern that the removal of hearings signals imminent removal. The Honduran government announced on 1 September that it had initiated “coordinated efforts for institutional cooperation” to ensure the “safe return” of minors deported from the United States.
Laura Smith, executive director of the Children’s Legal Center, received emails from ORR facilities in Illinois warning that ICE may soon take Honduran minors into custody with the intent to repatriate them. A legal services provider in Texas also received an anonymous call from a shelter staff member indicating that the government planned to “repatriate all children under ORR custody without making any announcement.”
