Guatemalan man deported to Mexico flown back to US after judge's orders
A Guatemalan man who said he was deported to Mexico despite fearing he would be persecuted there was flown back to the US on Wednesday after a judge ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return, his lawyer said.
Brian Murphy, a US district judge in Boston, Massachusetts, had ordered the man's return after the US Department of Justice notified him that its claim that the man had expressly stated he was not afraid of being sent to Mexico was based on erroneous information.
In a court order last month, Murphy found that the deportation of the man, identified in legal filings only as OCG, likely 'lacked any semblance of due process'.
'No one has ever suggested that OCG poses any sort of security threat,' Murphy wrote, adding: 'In general, this case presents no special facts or legal circumstances, only the banal horror of a man being wrongfully loaded onto a bus and sent back to a country where he was allegedly just raped and kidnapped.'
Murphy went on to say: 'At oral argument, defendants' counsel confirmed that it is 'the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture' … The return of OCG poses a vanishingly small cost to make sure we can still claim to live up to that ideal.'
According to a court declaration, OCG, who had returned to Guatemala following his deportation to Mexico two months ago, said: 'I have been living in hiding, in constant panic and constant fear.'
OCG, who is gay, had applied for asylum in the US last year after he was attacked multiple times in homophobic acts of violence in Guatemala.
'I don't stay in any of the places I used to stay because the story is the same as ever here: gay people like me are targeted simply for who we are. This produces constant fear and panic,' OCG said in his court declaration from Guatemala, adding: 'Living a normal life is impossible here, and I live in fear because of the past hateful incidences I experienced … There is no justice for me here.'
Following Murphy's court order, Donald Trump's administration said in a court filing on 28 May that federal immigration officials were working 'to bring OCG back to the United States on an air charter operations flight return leg'.
Last month, Trump officials admitted to an 'error' of falsely claiming that OCG was not afraid of being returned to Mexico.
'Upon further investigation, defendants cannot identify any officer who asked O.C.G. whether he had a fear of return to Mexico. Nor can defendants identify the officer who O.C.G. states 'told [him] that he was being deported to Mexico',' government lawyers said in a court filing.
The Guardian has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment.
Reuters contributed reporting
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