A U.S. federal judge has temporarily halted a Trump administration operation to deport Guatemalan children in the early hours of the weekend, stopping at least two flights, including one already airborne, and once again dealing a setback to the administration’s hardline immigration agenda.

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court in Washington issued an emergency order late on August 31 (local time), blocking the removal of 10 Guatemalan children and more than 600 unaccompanied minors.

“I do not want there to be any ambiguity about what I am ordering,” she said. “No children are to be removed while this case is pending.” She called the government’s attempt to “remove unaccompanied minors from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend” was “surprising.”

The events unfolded with unusual urgency. At 1 a.m., the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant rights advocacy group, filed an emergency request to halt the deportations. Sooknanan expedited the hearing and issued her ruling in the middle of the night. By 4 a.m., she had ordered the administration to circulate the court’s decision. A Guatemala-bound plane preparing for takeoff was stopped, and at least one flight already in the air was ordered to return.

The U.S. Justice Department later confirmed that all 76 children who had boarded the planes would be returned to shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. Under the ruling, deportations of Guatemalan children in U.S. custody will be suspended for 14 days.

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and a key architect of Trump’s immigration policies, blasted the ruling on X, claiming that “The Biden judge is effectively kidnapping these migrant children and refusing to let them return home to their parents in their home country.”

The Trump administration had reportedly been planning to send hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children back in coordination with the Guatemalan government. Roughly 2,000 children are currently being held in U.S. shelters, most of them from Guatemala.

Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center and an attorney for the children, condemned the operation. “The idea of waking vulnerable children in the middle of the night and putting them on planes should shock the conscience of every American,” she said. President Trump has been pressing ahead with policies to return migrants either to their home countries or to third countries.