The Questions No One Wants to Answer: Where Were the Children, and Why Were We Kept in the Dark?

[B.See]

The Questions No One Wants to Answer: Where Were the Children, and Why Were We Kept in the Dark? - Daily Kos

Nearly 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children, ages 10 to 17 according to NPR and the NYT, were quietly rounded up and loaded onto chartered planes in the dead of night over a holiday weekend. These kids were minutes away from being deported when District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan issued an emergency 14-day injunction that forced ICE to return them to U.S. custody. Court filings confirm the planes were on the tarmac in Texas, children already seated, when the order hit. (Washington Post, Politico)

This wasn’t rumor. It was a planned, covert operation that bypassed oversight — and it was only stopped because lawyers moved fast and a judge answered her phone at 2:30 a.m.

And now, in the stunned silence that’s followed, the real story lingers in the questions no one seems willing to answer.

This isn’t about partisan differences or policy debates. This is about basic humanity. Any administration willing to move children in secret, with no transparency and no public accountability, has shown the country something deeply troubling — that these children were treated as problems to move, not lives to protect.

I think it shows us far more than THAT.

[FalloutShelter]

1. How do we know that some of these children have

Not been trafficked?

We don’t. We don’t actually know much of anything except that this administration is a criminal enterprise that is capable of any monstrosity.

That is, in itself, the answer though isn’t it?

[markodochartaigh]

2. Apparently

the children were in shelters or foster care.


"Over Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration attempted to remove Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. alone and were living in shelters or with foster care families in the U.S."

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-to-know-about-guatemalan-migrant-children-and-efforts-to-send-them-home

[sheshe2]

3. This stinks of Miller

Crossing the Moral Line
In American politics, there’s one rule even the ugliest scandals have respected: you don’t mess with kids.

This isn’t about partisan differences or policy debates. This is about basic humanity. Any administration willing to move children in secret, with no transparency and no public accountability, has shown the country something deeply troubling — that these children were treated as problems to move, not lives to protect.

[B.See]

4. Exactly. The PBS article provides some clarity, BUT

the circumstances apparently seemed troubling enough that a judge decided to put a temporary stop to the... operation.

What's more, it only FURTHER confirms the willingness of Trump's maladminístration to enforce their will in the deportation of immigrants, even children, contrary to law and due process.

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/g-s1-86788/faq-why-were-76-guatemalan-children-pulled-off-deportation-flights-in-the-middle-of-the-night

[H2O Man]

6. Exactly.

You nailed it.

[Deuxcents]

5. 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children..just where did they all come from and how did they get here?

How were they separated from their parents or families? Have they been staying in shelters, foster homes..just how to you get 600 children together on an airplane and no one asks questions in the dead of night on a weekend? Where are they now? How are they being cared for? I don’t have the answers but we need answers because I’m sure these kids are terrified 🤬

[Ford_Prefect]

7. Someone needs to begin arresting ICE members for felony criminal charges. Kidnapping, imprisonment, & torture,

for a start. Where are the state and local AG's and DA's????

Block THEM in their stations. Hold THEM pending charges. Refuse them landing rights and other transportation privileges.

Next we go after Noem and the others for reckless endangerment, false imprisonment, and falsifying evidence. Let them sit in holding cells until they can prove they acted lawfully. They are quite clearly a menace to public safety.

[1WorldHope]

8. How the hell did we ever get here?

Miller doesn't go after the cartel because they are scary and dangerous. So, they go after the most innocent people they can. And no MAGA's get hurt in the process because they are a bunch of weak and pathetic puppets looking for someone to give their pathetic lives meaning. It's like still bullying their classmates in primary school. The question I want to know as well, where are these children really going? Is Stevenmiller selling those children into slavery and continued trafficking? What a bunch of awful fucks these dickheads are.

[ecstatic]

10. NO MERCY for tRump and his criminal accomplices

All of them need to pay, beginning on January 20th 2029. That is my litmus test for any Democratic presidential candidate going forward.

[NBachers]

11. The distribution channels were set up with border-kidnapped kids who crossed with their families during *rump 1st admin.

Xtian fundie Betsy DeVos disciples who wanted free kids to pummel into a "better life."

The use-'em-up & pass 'em around kid slave networks.

The depraved abuse traffickers.

The hidden room coffin-chamber deviants.

The serial kill-and-kill-again psychos.

The special-meal-prep dinner party crowd.

Republicans all

[uponit7771]

12. Still have the guy feeling this is all to get children into another pedo scheme

[B.See]

13. They don't care about children.

Anti vaxxers who place their children and other children at risk, who oppose gun legislation that'd make for safer schools, who work to undo child labour laws, who are advocates for underaged marriages, who refuse free summer lunch programs, undo child nutrition programs and SNAP benefits, oppose a higher federal minimum wage, who undo healthcare, the ACA, Medicaid, who undo and oppose anti-pollution laws that'd make for a healthier environment, and who are hard at work dumbing DOWN our schools,

DON'T CARE.

So rousing tramatized children from their sleep, transporting them to parts unknown to them, and loading them aboard planes in the dead of night, isn't too much of a reach for the Trump/ MAGA mentality.

[B.See]

14. In spite of the onslaught of developments

unpredictable and some, no doubt, deliberate, the real and consequential horrors of Trump's maladministration are still a reality, and are still playing out behind the din.

One being the story of the attempted disappearance of hundreds of Guatamalan children, loaded aboard airplanes in Texas in the dead of night, for destinations unknown.

The Trump administration's cover story being that it was done at the request of their families.

Only, as it turns out, that too was bullshit:

DOJ backs off claims about Guatemalan children it sought to deport - POLITICO via MSN

The Trump administration backed off claims Wednesday that hundreds of Guatemalan children it attempted to send to the country last month — before a judge blocked the abrupt weekend deportations — had been requested to return by their parents.

A Justice Department attorney acknowledged that the government’s earlier claims had no factual basis and in fact had been contradicted by a review by the Guatemalan government. That review indicated that parents for most of the children could not be located, and those who were largely suggested they wanted their children to remain in the United States for economic opportunities.

The report from Guatemala’s attorney general — filed with the court this week by lawyers representing the children — said none of the families who could be found actually sought the return of their kids. About half the families contacted “expressed annoyance when this Office went to their residences, rejecting the request to conduct an assessment, sometimes in an intimidating manner.”