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Trump Appointed Judge Calls Out Regime In Guatemalan Children Case, In Another Blow To Regularity. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-09-18

Today, Trump appointed Judge Timothy Kelly called out the Trump Regime’s false declarations in court over the Regime’s dark of the night Labor Day Weekend scheme to illegally deport hundreds of children to Guatemala. You can read the judge’s decision HERE. The judge’s own opening summation of the matter is quite sufficient to explain it all.

Just before midnight on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, several Executive Branch agencies began to implement a plan to expel from the United States certain unaccompanied alien children in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services and send them back to their home country of Guatemala. Those agencies told the children’s caretakers, who were hearing about the plan for the first time, to have them ready for pickup in as little as two hours. The children were roused from their beds in the middle of the night and driven to an airport, where some were loaded onto planes. Lawyers got wind of this hasty operation while it was unfolding and filed this lawsuit seeking emergency relief that Sunday at 1:00 a.m. The judge on emergency duty entered a temporary restraining order barring the agencies and their officials from removing or otherwise transportingthe children from the United States. At a hearing later that day, counsel for Defendants [the Trump Regime] explained why it was “fairly outrageous” for Plaintiffs to have sued: all Defendants wanted to do was reunify children with parents who had requested their return. But that explanation crumbled like a house of cards about a week later. There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return. To the contrary, the Guatemalan Attorney General reports that officials could not even track down parents for most of the children whom Defendants found eligible for their“reunification” plan. And none of those that were located had asked for their children to comeback to Guatemala.

As the court later makes clear, the Trump Regime stood before emergency Judge Sooknanan and told her, “for these children, a request has been made by either their parent or legal guardian.” As if playing for public relations the Regime declared that it was “fairly outrageous that plaintiffs are trying to interfere with these reunifications.” As quoted above, this narrative that evil liberals were trying to keep wanting parents from their poor babies “crumbled like a house of cards.” As Judge Kelly noted the Regime’s attorneys withdrew this claim at his later hearing. [see p. 34 of the decision]

Put simply, the Trump Regime flat out lied.

The Trump appointee also made clear he didn’t trust the Trump Regime to stick to its words. The judge addressed whether an injunction would be necessary because, since the filing of the lawsuit, the Regime’s lawyers had adjusted the removal criteria to exclude most of the children. Making clear his lack of trust in the good faith of the Regime the judge responded:

there is no legal roadblock preventing Defendants from changing the criteria (or how they interpret them) tomorrow, placing a currently non-eligible child onto the eligibility list, and hustling that child out of the country as they tried to do over Labor Day weekend. Given the possibility that Defendants may alter their criteria and then act in a way that would prevent judicial review, the risk of irremediable harm to Plaintiffs who happen to be ineligible under the criteria now is more imminent than it would otherwise seem. Second, the record and Defendants’ conduct suggest that they are not applying their criteria accurately, consistently, or in ways that reflect good faith.

That final dig, suggesting the government cannot be trusted to act in good faith, is one I find particularly notable. It suggests yet another judge discounting the “presumption of regularity” that normally presumes the government will in good faith act when it tells a court it will do. With this administration’s history no longer justifying that presumption the injunction is required to ensure a compliance that otherwise would have been assumed simply based on the government’s assurances. The Department of Justice losing this valuable presumption was on display in earlier proceedings when Judge Sooknanan compelled DOJ attorneys to file repetitive status reports assuring the court it was complying with each step in the judge’s orders. You might enjoy what I said about that at the time.

x You woke me up at 2:30 am for this bullshit, and I am going to status report your asses to exhaustion. — KeithDB (@keithdb.bsky.social) 2025-09-01T01:18:45.089Z

In the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case Judge Paula Xinis flat out stated: “You have taken the presumption of regularity and destroyed it.” In that case the government repeatedly took the position that El Salvador had sole control of Abrego Garcia and the United States had no authority to bring about his return. This was contradicted by El Salvador telling the United Nations, the exact opposite, that the prisoners were under the sole jurisdiction of the United States, and the Trump Regime finally actually bringing Abrego Garcia back.

With the courts tired of government deception, the loss of the presumption of regularity will be a major headache for government attorneys. Loss of the benefit of the doubt means doubt is always present. Basic facts government attorneys represent in court will no longer be presumed true, the government must prove them. Courts will no longer accept government representations of what they will do. Instead government attorney will have to file additional paperwork showing the promises were fulfilled. Courts will no longer assume the government will act in good faith to comply with court orders. The government will have to file paperwork documenting that the orders were complied with.

A final point should be noted here. This Regime makes a great pretense of opposing child trafficking, yet that is exactly what this Regime attempted to do with these children. It is clear that most (if not all) these children were not going back to their parents. This Regime would have no clue who, or with what kind of people, they ended up with, and the Regime did not care who, or with what kind of people, the children ended up with.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/18/2344221/-Trump-Appointed-Judge-Calls-Out-Regime-In-Guatemalan-Children-Case-In-Another-Blow-To-Regularity?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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