Left: Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference at the Nashville International Airport, Thursday, July 17, 2025, in Nashville, Tennessee (AP Photo/George Walker IV). Right inset: U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan (U.S. District Court).
In an unusual Labor Day weekend showdown, dozens of “unaccompanied” Guatemalan minors separated from their parents or legal guardians swiftly persuaded a federal judge to block the Trump administration from carrying out deportations — and as of Monday, the DOJ said, the government has followed the temporary restraining order (TRO) that came with the judge”s ruling.
The breakneck court activity, though not entirely unlike weekend proceedings in March in the high-profile Alien Enemies Act (AEA) case J.G.G. v. Donald Trump, unfolded in the wee hours of the morning — and has so far yielded a strikingly different response from the government.
The court docket in L.G.M.L. et al. v. Kristi Noem just about says it all. The complaint was filed in the early-morning hours Sunday, and we know this because U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said in a minute order that the complaint was filed at 1:02 a.m. Sooknanan then issued a TRO at 4:22 a.m. and set a hearing for 3 p.m. later the same day.
The judge said her order was justified by the “exigent circumstances” presented, namely the allegation the government was planning to deport to Guatemala 10 “unaccompanied minors” between the ages of 10 and 17 and potentially “hundreds” more, a situation the would-be class action lead plaintiffs described as “imminent risk of unlawful removal from the United States,” with loaded planes reportedly sitting on a tarmac.
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Sooknanan ordered that the government “shall not remove any of the individual Plaintiffs from the United States for 14 days absent further Order of the Court,” before extending that to apply to “putative class” members, including “all Guatemalan unaccompanied minors in Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement [ORR] custody as of 1:02 AM on August 31, 2025, the time of the filing of the Complaint, who are not subject to an executable final order of removal.”
Lawfare’s Anna Bower chronicled, in detail, what was said at the ensuing hearing, which the judge began by telling DOJ attorney Drew Ensign to make sure that the powers that be at the Department of Homeland Security were aware that, in addition to the initial plaintiffs, potential deportations of class action members in the lawsuit were blocked.
Bower recounted that Ensign told Sooknanan the “Government of Guatemala has requested the return of these children, and all of these children have their parents or guardians in Guatemala who are requesting their return[.]”
The judge noted that the plaintiffs’ National Immigration Law Center attorney before her said, on the contrary, that certain minors feared returning to Guatemala, that their parents had not sought their return, and that Congress in any event has “created a special statutory scheme to ensure that unaccompanied minors receive enhanced protection and care whenever the government seeks to remove them from the United States.”
Sooknanan: I have counsel telling me that there are children whose parents did not request their return to Guatemala. I have declaration representations contrary to what you’re telling me. How does that [factual discrepancy] get resolved?
— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Sooknanan, hearing that the government would need until Friday to file a brief on these issues of disputed fact, barred the apparently imminent deportations until she can issue a ruling.
Judge Sooknanan: And I tried to reach the government. I have been up since then..and didn’t reach anyone from the government until later this morning. And the imminence that the plaintiff claimed proved true, because, in fact, those planes *were* loaded. One actually took off and was returned.
— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 2:12 PM
The docket shows that, although the government initially missed a 4 p.m. deadline to file a report Sunday confirming that the deportations had not been carried out — with Sooknanan ordering the DOJ “show cause why a status report was not filed by that deadline” — Ensign explained he didn’t know about the deadline because “Defendants had not yet entered an appearance” in the case.
At the same time, the government confirmed that “all of the class members that were on planes today have been deplaned and are in the process of being returned to ORR custody.”
Then, on Monday, the government said it was “not aware of any other putative class members that have not been returned to ORR custody.”
A reported total of 76 migrants were on the planes originally set to go to Guatemala.
The upshot of the DOJ’s compliance and halting of deportations is that it means avoiding being bogged down for months by anything from whistleblower testimony to contempt proceedings to appellate proceedings about the contempt issue, and beyond.
Sooknanan’s court bio notes that she once clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and worked in the DOJ’s civil rights division as a principal deputy assistant attorney general. She is still in her first year as a federal judge, after she was nominated to the position by President Joe Biden and narrowly confirmed in December 2024.
