Honduras

TUCSON — A federal judge in Arizona temporarily blocked the Trump administration from removing dozens of Guatemalan and Honduran children living in shelters or foster care after coming to the U.S. alone, according to a decision Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez in Tucson extended until at least Sept. 26 a temporary restraining issued over the Labor Day weekend. Márquez raised concern over whether the government had arranged for any of the children’s parents or legal guardians in Guatemala to take custody of them.

Laura Belous, attorney for the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, which represents the children, said in court that the minors had expressed no desire to be repatriated to their native Guatemala and Honduras amid concerns they could face neglect, possible child trafficking or hardships associated with individual medical conditions.

Lawyers for the children said that their clients have said they fear going home, and that the government is not following laws designed to protect migrant children.

A legal aid group filed a lawsuit in Arizona on behalf of 57 Guatemalan children and 12 from Honduras between the ages of 3 and 17.

Denise Ann Faulk, an assistant U.S. attorney under the Trump administration, emphasized that the child repatriations were negotiated at high diplomatic levels and would avoid lengthy prohibitions on returning to the U.S.

Nearly all the children were in the custody of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement and living at shelters in the Phoenix and Tucson areas. Similar lawsuits filed in Illinois and Washington seek to stop the government from removing the children.

The Arizona lawsuit demands that the government grant the children their right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in their best interest.

The Trump administration has argued it is acting in the best interest of the children by trying to reunite them with their families at the behest of the Guatemalan government. After Guatemalan officials toured U.S. detention facilities, the government said that it was “very concerned” and that it would take children who wanted to return voluntarily.

Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.

Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.

The Arizona lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to an Arizona legal aid group that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the lawsuit was initially filed Aug. 30.

Judge Márquez said she found it “frightening” that U.S. officials may not have coordinated with the children’s parents. She also expressed concern that the government was denying the children access to review by an experienced immigration judge, and noted that legal representatives for the children were notified of preparations for child departures with little notice, late at night.

“On a practical matter, it just seems that a lot of these things that [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] has taken upon themselves to do — such as screening and making judicial determinations that should be made by an immigration judge with expertise and time to meet with a lawyer and meet with a child — is just surpassed by saying ‘we’re reuniting them’” with parents, Márquez said in court as she pressed Faulk for more information.

Billeaud and Lee write for the Associated Press.

Appeals court pauses an order that had protected status for Nepalese, Hondurans and Nicaraguans.

A United States appeals court has sided with the Trump administration and halted, for now, a lower court’s order that had kept in place temporary protections for 60,000 migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.

In a decision issued on Wednesday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted an emergency stay pending an appeal. Immigrant rights advocates allege that the administration acted unlawfully in ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.

This decision means that the Republican administration can move towards removing an estimated 7,000 people from Nepal whose TPS designations expired on August 5. The TPS designations and legal status of 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire September 8, at which point they will become eligible for removal.

“The district court’s order granting plaintiffs’ motion to postpone, entered July 31, 2025, is stayed pending further order of this court,” wrote the judges.

In July, a district judge ordered that the termination of the TPS be halted until November, when a hearing on the merits is scheduled. In her ruling, she found that the plaintiffs would suffer “irreparable harm” by the hasty termination, but also noted that the broader public would be impacted both economically and socially by the loss to the labour force and community.

The brief decision issued on Wednesday did not give a reason, and in a statement, UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy co-director Ahilan Arulanantham said there appeared to be a lack of due process.

“The court’s failure to provide any reasoning for its decision, including why this was an ‘emergency,’ falls far short of what due process requires and our clients deserve.”

TPS allows nationals from countries facing conflict, natural disaster or other extraordinary circumstances to temporarily remain in the US. It also gives them the right to work and travel.

The Trump administration has aggressively sought to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal. It is part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants.

Since taking office, the administration has sought to remove protections for Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Cameroonians – despite troubling conditions in their home countries.

The operation, on paper, appeared to be a typical government crackdown on drug traffickers.

In late 2024, more than two dozen masked officers descended on an alleged narcotics lab on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where they found materials for processing cocaine and automatic weapons.

There was only one problem: The evidence, including the firearms and cocaine, seems to have disappeared from the public record.

That is according to a Honduran prosecutor specialising in cases of state corruption who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, for fear of professional reprisal.

The prosecutor believes there is a strong possibility the police may have kept the weapons and drugs to resell them on the black market.

Experts say questions of corruption and abuse have come to typify Honduras’s “state of exception”, an emergency declaration that has suspended certain constitutional rights while granting greater powers to the military and police.

Such measures are meant to be temporary. The state of exception was first declared in December 2022, in the name of fighting drug traffickers and gangs.

But it has been extended at least 17 times since, often without the explicit approval of Honduras’s Congress.

For human rights observers, the continued renewals have raised alarms over whether the state of exception is being used as a shield for law enforcement excesses.

In May, for instance, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) urged the Honduran government to “put an end” to the state of exception, citing systematic abuses at the hands of security forces.

“The implementation of the state of exception has led to serious human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and raids without judicial oversight,” the UN office wrote.

It added that Honduras’s National Commission for Human Rights (CONADEH) had arrived at similar conclusions.

Joaquin Mejia — an investigator with the Team for Reflection, Investigation and Communication, a Honduran human rights advocacy group — believes such abuses are a trend under the state of exception.

“The biggest negative effect is what the National Commission for Human Rights registered: that, from December 2022 to December 2024, 798 complaints at the national level over human rights abuses are attributed to state security forces,” Mejia said.

Aug. 8 (UPI) — Less than three months before general elections, Honduras’ National Electoral Council, or CNE, faces unprecedented political, judicial and technical pressures that threaten to derail the process.

The council’s ability to ensure an orderly and reliable election has been called into question after a series of setbacks: a raid on its offices by the Public Ministry, delays in contracting the Preliminary Electoral Results Transmission System, or TREP, and errors in the voter registry.

CNE President Cossette López has denounced persistent interference and threats, while council member Ana Paola Hall submitted a conditional resignation over internal disputes.

Amid the crisis, the CNE reached an agreement Thursday after a two-week delay, resolving one of the main technical disputes — use of the TREP.

After intense negotiations, the CNE unanimously agreed to immediately and fully publish all tally sheets from the vote receiving boards on election night, followed the next day by a 100% visual verification in the presence of national and international observers.

This week, the National Democratic Institute’s Electoral Study and Accompaniment Mission visited Honduras. On Friday, it released a report warning about the negative impact of judicial intervention and interference by other institutions in electoral work, as well as the use of hate speech and attacks against journalists, social leaders and politicians — particularly those targeting politically active women, including CNE members and candidates at all levels of office.

The NDI identified five key challenges to ensuring election integrity: effective autonomy of electoral bodies, prevention of undue interference, reduction of polarization and premature fraud claims, prevention of electoral violence and easing tensions that affect civic space.

Among its recommendations, the NDI urged ensuring the independent participation of civil society and creating safe spaces for dialogue. It said Hondurans deserve credible, peaceful and inclusive elections, which require political, institutional and technical conditions that guarantee certainty, transparency and respect for the will of the voters.

In a politically symbolic move, four of Honduras’ five leading presidential candidates signed a pact Tuesday, Aug. 4, titled “Honduras First: A Promise That Is Demanded, a Duty That Is Fulfilled,” promoted by the National Anti-Corruption Council.

The public pledge — focused on fighting corruption and impunity and promoting integrity in governance — calls for, among other measures, creating an international commission against corruption and impunity, reactivating the extradition treaty with the United States, establishing a national public integrity system and implementing a nationwide transparency and anti-corruption strategy with an interagency approach.

Signatories included Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, Nasry Asfura of the National Party, Mario Rivera of the Christian Democratic Party and Nelson Ávila of PINU-SD. Rixi Moncada, the ruling party’s candidate and former finance minister under President Xiomara Castro, did not attend the signing.

Aug. 1 (UPI) — A federal judge has ruled to postpone the Trump administration’s termination of deportation protections for tens of thousands of migrants from Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua amid litigation.

Judge Trina Thompson of the U.S. District Court in Northern California issued her strongly worded order Thursday, delaying the termination of Temporary Protected Status until at least Nov. 18, when a hearing is scheduled to hear the merits of the case.

The ruling is a win for immigration advocates, who have been fighting Trump’s crackdown on immigration and policies seeking to mass-deport migrants in the country.

“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty and the American dream. That is all plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names and purify their blood. The court disagrees,” Thompson said in her decision.

TPS was established by Congress in 1990 to shield migrants in the United States from being deported to their home countries experiencing problems, such as war, conflict or famine, where they would be put into harm’s way.

Honduras and Nicaragua were both granted TPS designation in January 1999, following the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch a year prior, with Nepal receiving the designation in 2015.

Some 60,000 people from the three countries are currently protected from being deported to their native nations because of TPS, many of whom have been in the United States for decades.

Trump has attempted to dismantle TPS. In early June, he announced it was ending such protections for those from Nepal, followed by doing the same for those from Honduras and Nicaragua. The designations were to be terminated within 60 days — Aug. 5 for Nepal and Sept. 8 for Honduras and Nicaragua.

The Trump administration cited that conditions in each of the three countries no longer warranted TPS designation.

The move was met with litigation filed by the National TPS Alliance on July 7, arguing the terminations violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to follow the necessary review process rules while stating racial animus was the actual motive behind ending the deportation protections.

The next day, National TPS Alliance filed for postponement of the terminations.

“Today’s court decision is a powerful affirmation of our humanity and our right to live without fear,” Sandhya Lama, a TPS holder from Nepal and plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. “As a TPS holder and mother, this victory means safety, hope and the chance to keep building our lives here.”

In her decision, Thompson, a President Joe Biden appointee, cited comments from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about TPS and immigrants as proof of racial animus behind the terminations.

She said Noem had intended to end TPS without first reviewing any country condition reports and that she had expressed bias against the program.

“These statements reflect the secretary’s animus against immigrants and the TPS program even though individuals with TPS hold lawful status — a protected status that we expressly conferred by Congress with the purpose of providing humanitarian relief,” Thompson said, adding that TPS holders have contributed billion to the economy by legally working, paying taxes and contributing to Medicare.

“By stereotyping the TPS program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, Secretary Noem’s statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population.”

Thompson also mentioned comments from Trump and other White House officials about migrants that show racial animus.

Trump has also sought to end TPS protections for other nations, including Afghanistan — moves that are also being challenged in court.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is ending the temporary status for nearly 80,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans that has allowed them to live and work in the U.S. for a quarter of a century after a devastating hurricane hit Central America, according to federal government notices — a move that comes as the White House pushes to make more immigrants in the U.S. eligible for deportation.

The notices are part of a wider effort by the current administration to make good on campaign promises to carry out mass deportations of immigrants. It’s doing this by going after people in the country illegally or those who’ve committed crimes that make them eligible for deportation but also by removing protections from hundreds of thousands of people, many admitted under the Biden administration.

Temporary Protected Status is a temporary protection that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people of various nationalities who are in the United States, which prevents them from being deported and allows them to work. The Trump administration has aggressively been seeking to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal.

Administration says conditions have changed

The Department of Homeland Security said Monday in the Federal Register — in a notice set to become official on Tuesday — that Secretary Kristi Noem had reviewed the country conditions in Honduras and Nicaragua. She concluded the situations there had improved enough since the initial decision in 1999 that people currently protected by those temporary designations could return home.

The department estimated that roughly 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans in the U.S. are covered by the status that will now expire in about two months. However, the TPS Alliance, which advocates for immigrants covered by these temporary protections, estimated that about 40,000 Hondurans would be affected because many had obtained legal residency through various immigration channels.

Temporary Protected Status for both nationalities expired Saturday. The notices said the protections will be terminated 60 days after the notices are officially published in the Federal Register.

TPS is usually granted when conditions in someone’s home country make it difficult to return. People covered by it must register with the Department of Homeland Security and then they’re protected from being deported and can work.

However, it does not grant them a pathway to citizenship and the secretary must renew it regularly, often in 18-month intervals.

When their status officially ends, Hondurans and Nicaraguans currently covered by the Temporary Protected Status can be deported and their work permits will be terminated if they can’t find another avenue to stay in the country.

Critics say ‘temporary’ became permanent

Critics say that successive administrations — especially the Biden administration — essentially rubber-stamped these renewals regardless, and people covered by what’s supposed to be a temporary status end up staying in the United States for years.

The Trump administration has already terminated TPS for about 350,000 Venezuelans, 500,000 Haitians, more than 160,000 Ukrainians, and thousands of people from Afghanistan, Nepal and Cameroon. Some of them, like Venezuelans, Haitians and Ukrainians, have pending lawsuits at federal courts.

An additional 250,000 Venezuelans are still protected under TPS until September, as well as thousands of Syrians. TPS for Ethiopians expires in December, for Yemenis and Somalians in March 2026, and for Salvadoreans in September 2026.

During the Biden administration, the number of people protected by TPS grew significantly. Nearly 1 million Venezuelans and Haitians were protected.

Jose Palma, co-coordinator at the National TPS Alliance, said the termination announced Monday will affect people who have lived in the United States for nearly three decades.

“They have established families. Investments. It is a community that …. has undergone annual background checks, that has shown … all its contributions to this country,” Palma said. “It’s cruel what’s happening.”

Litigation delayed ending the protections

Temporary protections for both countries were initially granted in 1999 following 1998’s Hurricane Mitch. The first Trump administration attempted to end the protections but they both remained in place after litigation.

Homeland Security wrote in the Federal Register notice that Honduras had “witnessed significant changes in the 26 years since Hurricane Mitch’s destruction.”

“Honduras has made significant progress recovering from the hurricane’s destruction and is now a popular tourism and real estate investment destination,” the department wrote. The department said the Honduran government in January had launched a plan called “Brother, Come Home,” which aims to help Hondurans deported from the U.S. with money and help finding a job.

Of Nicaragua, Noem wrote: “Nicaragua has made significant progress recovering from the hurricane’s destruction with the help of the international community and is now a growing tourism, ecotourism, agriculture, and renewable energy leader.”

Honduras Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio García expressed disappointment at the announcement Monday.

“They argue that Honduras has foreign investment, tourism and its program ‘Honduran come home’ and that there are conditions to return,” García said. But he said it was the anti-immigrant sentiment of the Trump administration that was really behind it.

“They came to power with that and they’re getting it done for their electorate,” he said.

Francis García has lived in the United States for almost 30 years and has been a TPS beneficiary for 25. Her three adult children were born in the United States, a country she considers her own.

“I feel sad, worried and scared,” said Garcia, 48, who never went back to her country. “I am very afraid to return to Honduras. I can’t imagine it; I wouldn’t want to.”

Like Garcia, Teofilo Martinez, 57, has lived half of his life in the U.S., most of it under TPS protection. He arrived with nothing but now has his own construction company and he is also a Realtor.

“We ask that our good behavior and contributions be taken into consideration,” Martinez said. “There are no conditions in Honduras for us to return.”

Santana and Salomon write for the Associated Press. Salomon reported from Miami. Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, contributed to this report.

June 27 (UPI) — Honduras is preparing for general elections on Nov. 30, 2025, amid a fragile democracy and ongoing internal conflict. Corruption, violence and impunity have eroded the country’s institutions and deepened public distrust in the electoral process.

The National Electoral Council, or CNE, is facing a crisis after chaotic primary elections in March involving the nation’s three major political parties. The vote was marred by severe logistical failures. In many polling stations, ballot boxes and voting materials arrived up to 12 hours late, and officials reported major problems with transporting supplies.

CNE President Cossete López testified before Congress that she could not “guarantee” a clean general election, prompting concerns about a possible postponement.

Although other CNE members later confirmed the vote would proceed as scheduled, internal divisions remain. The council’s three commissioners — each affiliated with a different political party — have publicly blamed one another for the breakdown in March.

The Center for the Study of Democracy, or CESPAD, has been strongly critical of the electoral process, citing weak institutions, low public confidence, and a lack of clear action to address failures from the March primaries. The group also pointed to legal loopholes that allow arbitrary decisions, ongoing political violence and clientelism, and a history of result manipulation.

“The country is at a critical juncture. Current conditions raise fears that the general elections will unfold amid distrust, institutional improvisation and potential political destabilization,” CESPAD said.

CESPAD said the electoral budget was approved late, jeopardizing key systems such as the Election Results Transmission System, or TREP, and external audits. It also warned that the CNE continues to struggle with internal partisan divisions, technical staff resignations and low public credibility.

A survey by the Reflection, Research and Communication Team, or ERIC-SJ, found that 62.5% of respondents said the March primaries weakened democracy, while 76.8% said they do not trust the CNE.

Civil society groups and election experts are urging immediate reforms to restore the credibility of the CNE and ensure a reliable election process in November. They cite poor coordination, undertrained personnel and political interference in technical decisions within the electoral authority. They are also calling for extensive national and international monitoring to promote transparency and reduce the risk of fraud.

The ERIC-SJ survey also revealed a shift in the political landscape. The opposition Liberal Party now leads, with 39% of respondents saying they expect it to win, compared to 25.6% for Libre, the ruling party, and 23.2% for the National Party.

The change is attributed to growing dissatisfaction with President Xiomara Castro’s administration, which has weakened the candidacy of her ally, Rixi Moncada. At the same time, Liberal candidate Salvador Nasralla — a well-known television host running on an anti-corruption platform — has gained momentum.

Nasralla is attracting protest votes from Hondurans frustrated with the ruling party, while the National Party is working to rebuild support with candidate Nasry Asfura — despite lasting fallout from corruption scandals involving former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.

Beyond individual candidates, political skepticism remains deep. Only 1 in 10 Hondurans believes elections are fair, and just 10% trust the National Congress or political parties.

Still, voter turnout is expected to remain high. Eight in 10 respondents said they plan to vote in November.

President Castro enters the election season with falling approval ratings. Her administration earned an average score of 4.13 out of 10 — the lowest since she took office in 2022. Nearly 40% of Hondurans say the country is worse off than before her presidency.

Hondurans identify the government’s main failures as the ongoing economic crisis (28.8%), unemployment (17.9%), broken promises (16.1%) and insecurity (13.2%). Although President Castro points to achievements like a historic drop in homicides, her security strategy — based on emergency measures modeled after El Salvador’s approach — has drawn criticism from international human rights groups.

The international community, including the Organization of American States, the European Union and the United Nations, along with local organizations such as CESPAD and ERIC-SJ, have issued urgent calls for electoral reforms and technical protocols as a prerequisite for credible elections. The key question now is not only whether the vote will happen, but under what conditions.

Despite the tensions, there is broad consensus that the elections must be held on schedule. Canceling or postponing the vote is widely viewed as a step that could spark a deeper institutional crisis.

GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, pushing back against comments from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement that would allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to work in the capital’s airport, training local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects.

But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she called a safe-third-country agreement. She said she reached a similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes of her trip.

Asked about Noem’s comments Friday during a news conference, Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement reached with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens of other Central American nations as a transit point on their way home.

Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, safe third country was discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement during President Trump’s first term in office. But “we made it clear that our path was different,” Arévalo said.

He did add that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to Nicaraguans who have been unable to return to their country because of the political situation there out of “solidarity.”

The president’s communications office said Noem had been given the ratification of the agreement reached through diplomatic notes weeks earlier.

During Trump’s first term, the U.S. signed such safe-third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed “safe.”

Perez writes for the Associated Press.

A Central American asylum applicant arrested outside an L.A. immigration court is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security and the Trump administration for her immediate release and that of her two children, including her 6-year-old son stricken with cancer.

The Honduran woman, not named in court documents, filed a petition for writs of habeas corpus, challenging the legality of her and her family’s detention at a Texas facility. She is also asking for a preliminary injunction that would prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras, as her children cry and pray nightly to be released from a Texas holding facility, according to court documents.

She and her two children, including a 9-year-old daughter, are facing two removal proceedings concurrently: a previous removal proceeding involving their asylum request and this recent expedited removal process.

The woman claims the government violated many of their rights, including the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.

Her attorneys noted that DHS determined she was not a flight risk when she was paroled into the country and that her detention was unjustified.

The woman’s lawyers also argued that she was not given an opportunity to contest her family’s detention in front of a neutral adjudicator.

They also argue that the family’s 4th Amendment right to not be unlawfully arrested were violated.

The Honduran mother is being represented by several groups, including attorney Kate Gibson Kumar of the Texas Civil Rights Project, the San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service and the immigrant advocacy group Raices Texas.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio on Tuesday.

An after-hours email to the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately answered.

One of the focal points of the lawsuit is the fate of the woman’s son.

The youth was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 3 and has undergone chemotherapy treatments, including injecting chemotherapeutic agents into his cerebrospinal fluid, according to court documents.

He began treatment in Honduras and completed two years of chemotherapy, at which point the mother believes he no longer has leukemia cells in his blood, according to court documents.

The son, however, needs regular monitoring and medical care for his condition, according to court documents.

Last year, the family fled to the United States to “seek safety” after they were subject to “imminent, menacing death threats” in Honduras, according to court documents.

They applied for entrance while waiting in Mexico and received a CBP One app appointment in October to apply for asylum. They presented themselves at an undisclosed border entry, were processed and were paroled in the U.S., according to court documents.

They were scheduled to appear before a Los Angeles immigration court and moved to the area to live with family.

Both children enrolled in local public schools, attended Sunday church and were learning English, according to court documents.

The trio arrived at court May 29 for a hearing for their asylum request and were caught off guard when a Homeland Security lawyer asked for their case to be dismissed, according to court documents.

The woman told an immigration judge “we wish to continue [with our cases],” according to court documents.

The judge granted the dismissal and the Honduran mother and two children were immediately arrested by plainclothes ICE agents upon leaving the courtroom in the hallway, according to court documents. The woman had a June 5 medical appointment scheduled for her son’s cancer diagnosis, which he couldn’t attend because of the arrest.

The family was detained for hours on the first floor before being taken to an undisclosed immigration center in the city, according to court documents.

All three “cried in fear” and the young boy urinated on himself and remained in wet clothing “for hours,” according to court documents.

The trio were placed on a flight to San Antonio along with several other families. The date of the flight was not available.

After landing, the family was transported to a detention center in Dilley, Texas, where they have since resided.

The children have cried each night and prayed “for God to take them out of the detention center,” according to court documents.

The mother claims that the federal government did nothing to monitor her son’s leukemia for days.

Her lawyers have also sought the boy’s release for medical treatment, a request that was not fulfilled.

May 19 (UPI) — The first immigrants who agreed to self-deport and accept a $1,000 stipend left on a chartered flight out of the United States on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said.

The flight took 64 nationals — 26 from Colombia and 38 from Honduras — back home in “Project Homecoming.” They boarded a charter bus and then a World Atlantic Airlines charter that left Houston at 9:30 a.m. CDT. Children were given toys and everyone received a lunch bag.

“This was a voluntary charter flight, not an ICE enforcement operation,” DHS said in a news release, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“All participants were offered the same benefits as any illegal alien who self-deports using the CBP Home App. They received travel assistance, a $1,000 stipend, and preserved the possibility they could one day return to the United States legally.”

Earlier this month, HHS announced the program.

They said migrants typically would be given about three weeks to prepare to depart.

“Today, DHS conducted its first Project Homecoming charter flight of 64 individuals who voluntarily chose to self-deport to their home counties of Honduras and Colombia,” Secretary Kristi Noem said. “If you are here illegally, use the CBP Home App to take control of your departure and receive financial support to return home. If you don’t, you will be subjected to fines, arrest, deportation and will never be allowed to return. If you are in this country illegally, self-deport NOW and preserve your opportunity to potentially return the legal, right way.”

The app was redesigned from the Biden administration’s CBP One, which allowed migrants to schedule an appointment at a port of entry to make an initial claim of asylum.

In February, DHS launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign warning undocumented migrants that they will be deported if they are in the United States.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association cautioned people against self-reporting and taking the stipend.

“AILA cautions individuals when reviewing the announcement to understand it is deceptive and gives people the impression there are no consequences, such as being barred from returning in the future,” AILA said. No one should accept this without first obtaining good legal advice from an immigration attorney or other qualified representative.”

The group said the offer may be a “trap.”

“It is unethical for the government to tell people ‘Self-Deportation Is Safe’ but not explain the hardship and legal risks to them, especially for people who do not have an attorney and will not know their rights under the law,” the group said.

HHS posted photos of migrants headed to their Central American countries.

HHS noted returnees to Honduras were also eligible for $100 in government assistance and food vouchers.

The Colombian government provided social services from the Family Welfare Institute and the Department of Social Prosperity.

The self-deportation plan comes amid other ways the Trump administration is trying to deport migrants.

The State Department is using AI to monitor social media of foreign students for alleged “pro-Hamas” sympathies. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1958 are being used to deport people with supposed criminal records.

The Trump administration through the end of March arrested more than 158,000 unregistered immigrants, including more than 600 suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Of the arrests, 75% had convictions or pending charges, DHS said.

During November when Joe Biden was president, U.S. agents arrested more than 21,000 unauthorized immigrants — about one-third of Trump’s numbers.

Illegal border crossings have plunged to the lowest level in decades.

In March, there were 7,181 encounters at the border, which is a 95% reduction from 136,473 in the same month a year ago and 97% from 2022 of 211,181.

In April, it was roughly 8,400.