Donald Trump Hit by Legal Blow Over Deportation Error: ‘Horror'
On Friday a District Court Judge in Boston ruled that the Trump administration must seek to facilitate the return to the United States of a Guatemalan man who said he was erroneously deported to Mexico in February despite fears for his safety.
Newsweek contacted the Department of Justice via media inquiry form on Saturday outside of regular office hours.
The Trump administration is involved in a number of legal battles concerning migrants who say they were mistakenly deported from the U.S. under its direction, including two individuals who were sent to a super prison in El Salvador.
With the Republicans enjoying a majority in both the House and Senate, the courts have emerged as a major impediment to Trump administration policy, and have ruled against the government on a range of issues including the presence of transgender personnel in the military and a foreign aid freeze.
District Judge Brian Murphy on Friday instructed the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a Guatemalan, identified as O.C.G, to the U.S. following his deportation in February.
Initially the Justice Department said O.C.G. had stated he wasn't afraid of being sent to Mexico, but after further investigation admitted this was incorrect.
According to court documents O.C.G. claimed he had suffered "multiple violent attacks" in his native Guatemala and was also raped and held for ransom in Mexico before seeking asylum in the U.S. in 2024.
However in February, two days after receiving asylum status, he was forced on a bus back to Mexico and currently lives "in constant fear of his attackers" in Guatemala according to his legal team.
Murphy concluded that the deportation of O.C.G. likely "lacked due process" and that the individual shouldn't have been sent to Mexico without additional steps which "were ignored."
In a court filing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said O.C.G. had mistakenly been entered in a software system known as the "ENFORCE alien removal module" leading to his deportation.
ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations assistant field office director Brian Ortega said: "Upon further investigation…ICE was unable to identify an officer or officers who asked O.C.G. if he feared a return to Mexico."
In March the Trump administration admitted it had mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Maryland resident, to a super prison in El Salvador.
Arrested in 2019 and accused of being part of the MS-13 gang—a group the Trump administration labels a terrorist organization—Abrego Garcia denied the claim, though two judges found him to be a member based on confidential information provided to the court. He had been protected from deportation due to fears that rival gangs in El Salvador would target him. ICE officials said his deportation was the result of an "administrative error." Abrego Garcia has no U.S. criminal record.
In his ruling Murphy wrote: "O.C.G. was given up to Mexico, which then sent him back to Guatemala, where he remains in hiding today.
"No one has ever suggested that O.C.G poses any sort of security threat. 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 county where he was allegedly just raped and kidnapped."
It is likely legal battles over migrants deported to third countries by the Trump administration will continue.
In April a judge instructed the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return of Abrego Garcia to the U.S., but he remains in an El Salvadorian prison and its unclear what will happen with his case.
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