MEXICO CITY, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Many family members of unaccompanied Guatemalan migrant children who are part of a group the Trump administration attempted to deport over the weekend did not want their children returned to Guatemala, according to an internal Guatemalan government report that contradicts assertions made by U.S. officials.
The report, produced by a Guatemalan attorney general’s office and reviewed by Reuters, said Guatemalan authorities had contacted the families of 115 minors who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or guardian. Of those, 59 families expressed anger about the possibility of their children being returned to Guatemala, with some even describing it as intimidation, the document said.
Contents of the report have not been previously reported and offer the most comprehensive insight so far into the resistance of many family members to the children being deported. Some of those concerns were backed up by court filings published on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump’s effort to deport unaccompanied migrant children aged 10-17 over the weekend triggered an immediate legal challenge. In an emergency court hearing on Sunday, a Justice Department attorney said the parents wanted their children to be deported, but a lawyer for the children rejected that assertion.
