Sept. 18 (UPI) — A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to deport at least 600 Guatemalan children, rejecting claims by the Department of Homeland Security that the move was an effort to reunite them with their parents.

Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia said in his ruling that the administration’s claim that it was reuniting children with their parents “crumbled like a house of cards” because “there is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return to Guatemala.”

Kelly temporarily stopped the administration from transferring, repatriating, removing or otherwise aiding in the transport of any of the 76 Guatemalan migrant children that immigration authorities attempted to deport in the middle of the night during the Labor Day weekend.

Attorneys representing the children said they were notified by federal officials late at night that they were being “repatriated,” the ruling said.

The Trump administration pushed back on Kelly’s ruling

“This judge is blocking efforts to REUNIFY CHILDREN with their families,” Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, said in a statement to NBC News. “Now these children will have to go to shelters. All just to ‘get Trump.’ This is disgraceful and immoral.”

Kelly, appointed by President Donald Trump, referenced a report from the Guatemalan attorney general’s office in response to the administration’s plan to deport more than 600 children to the country. The report said no parents had requested the return of their children.