Trump administration says it is making plans to return deported Guatemalan man

Washington Post

a day ago

Lawyers for the Trump administration on Wednesday said officials are complying with a federal judge's orders to return a wrongly deported Guatemalan man to the United States, one of the first public signs of a turnaround by a government that has aggressively resisted returning deportees.
U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston on Friday ordered Trump officials to 'take all immediate steps' to facilitate the man's return to the United States. The man's lawyers had argued that he was deported to Mexico in February without being given the chance to contest it. Authorities there then sent him back to Guatemala. His lawyers said he is gay and had repeatedly fled persecution in both countries last year to seek protection in the United States.
The man, identified only by the initials O.C.G., is a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's moves to deport people to countries where they are not citizens without giving them a chance to challenge their removals. The Department of Homeland Security had previously signaled they would appeal the judge's ruling, but in a court filing Wednesday, government lawyers detailed the steps officials have taken to facilitate his return, including arranging for special permission to reenter the U.S. on humanitarian parole and making plans to transport him on the return leg of a deportation charter flight.
Officials did not inform the court about when the man would return and whether he would be detained afterward.
The government's disclosures Wednesday are in sharp contrast to the Trump administration's refusals so far to detail publicly its actions in other high-profile cases in which judges have ordered the return of migrants they found were wrongfully deported in recent months. O.C.G. is one of at least three immigrants who judges have said should be returned to the United States.
He is the only one who is not detained. The other two men, Kilmar Abrego García, a 29-year-old man married to a U.S. citizen in Maryland, and a Venezuelan man identified in court records as 'Cristian' were deported in March to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador.
In early April, a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to bring back Abrego García, who was illegally deported to El Salvador in what the Trump administration acknowledged was an 'administrative error.' A judge had barred him from being removed to El Salvador after finding he could face persecution from gangs in that country. Later that month, another federal judge in Maryland ordered officials to return Cristian so that his asylum application could be adjudicated.
The Supreme Court upheld the judge's order in Abrego García's case. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling in Cristian's case last week.
In Cristian's case on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in the Southern District of Maryland berated the government for defying her May 20 order to provide information by Tuesday about the 'steps they have taken to facilitate the return of Cristian to the United States.'
Gallagher, a Trump nominee, said officials 'utterly disregarded' her order and showed 'zero effort' to answer her questions about plans to return Cristian. She said the government's response 'is the functional equivalent of, 'We haven't done anything and don't intend to,'' she wrote in a three-page order Wednesday.
She gave them until Monday to remedy their 'noncompliance.'
Department of Homeland Security officials had no immediate comment Wednesday on Gallagher's ruling. Officials also did not comment directly to the Justice Department's status report in O.C.G.'s case.
On Friday, DHS indicated it would resist returning him. Agency spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin called Murphy a 'federal activist judge,' said Mexico was a 'safe' option for the Guatemalan man and that officials expected a 'higher court to vindicate us.'
She issued the same statement on Wednesday in response to questions about the Justice Department's filings detailing how it was complying with the judge's orders.
O.C.G. was one of four plaintiffs who filed the class-action lawsuit in Boston in March. He fled Guatemala last year after facing 'multiple death threats on account of his sexuality,' his lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. He arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Biden administration in March 2024 and sought asylum, but after about a week in immigration custody, he said DHS officers removed him without a hearing. He fled Guatemala again and traveled into Mexico in April 2024, but shortly after arriving, he said he was raped by one of the men who had been helping him reach the U.S. southern border.
The complaint alleged the men locked O.C.G. in a room for several days and released him only after his sister paid a ransom. He then fled to the United States seeking protection in May 2024. In February, after a hearing, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported to Guatemala, and soon afterward, officials put him on a bus to Mexico.
In Mexico, his lawyers said the man was given the 'Hobson's choice' of applying for asylum from a detention facility in that country or being returned to Guatemala. He went to Guatemala and into hiding, his lawyers said.
Vivian Ho contributed to this report.