Latest news with #O.C.G
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Trump administration working to return Guatemalan man deported to Mexico
The Trump administration said it is working to secure the return of a Guatemalan man wrongly deported to Mexico — a shift after refusing to do so for others removed in error. In a late Wednesday court filing, Justice Department officials said they were securing a flight for a man listed in court documents only as O.C.G. Lawyers for the man contested his removal as part of a broader case before Massachusetts-based U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy. He is one of a number of plaintiffs who have sued over plans to remove them from the country. O.C.G.'s attorneys have said their client is gay and was already protected from being returned to his native Guatemala. But they argued the Trump administration failed to account for his fear of being deported to Mexico, where he was previously raped and extorted. The government filing indicates Trump officials have arranged to give the man 'Significant Public Benefit Parole,' a form of humanitarian parole that would allow him to enter the country. They also said they plan to arrange a flight for him on the return leg of a deportation flight. The response stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration's stance to two other wrongly deported men that have been ordered returned to the U.S. The Trump administration has been ordered by the Supreme Court to 'facilitate' the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who an immigration judge protected from removal to his native El Salvador but who was nonetheless sent to a notorious megaprison in the country. They have similarly failed to return a man known only as Cristian in court documents, a Venezuelan man likewise sent to the Salvadoran prison despite being protected from deportation under a class action suit. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump administration working to return Guatemalan man deported to Mexico
The Trump administration said it is working to secure the return of a Guatemalan man wrongly deported to Mexico — a shift after refusing to do so for others removed in error. In a late Wednesday court filing, Justice Department officials said they were securing a flight for a man listed in court documents only as O.C.G. Lawyers for the man contested his removal as part of a broader case before Massachusetts-based U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy. He is one of a number of plaintiffs who have sued over plans to remove them from the country. O.C.G.'s attorneys have said their client is gay and was already protected from being returned to his native Guatemala. But they argued the Trump administration failed to account for his fear of being deported to Mexico, where he was previously raped and extorted. The government filing indicates Trump officials have arranged to give the man 'Significant Public Benefit Parole,' a form of humanitarian parole that would allow him to enter the country. They also said they plan to arrange a flight for him on the return leg of a deportation flight. The response stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration's stance to two other wrongly deported men that have been ordered returned to the U.S. The Trump administration has been ordered by the Supreme Court to 'facilitate' the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who an immigration judge protected from removal to his native El Salvador but who was nonetheless sent to a notorious megaprison in the country. They have similarly failed to return a man known only as Cristian in court documents, a Venezuelan man likewise sent to the Salvadoran prison despite being protected from deportation under a class action suit.
The Independent
5 days ago
- General
- The Independent
Trump administration agrees to return ‘wrongfully' deported immigrant for first time after battling court orders
For what appears to be the first time, Donald Trump 's administration will 'facilitate' the return of a 'wrongfully' deported immigrant following a court order. A gay Guatemalan man referred to as 'O.C.G' in court documents says he survived sexual violence and kidnapping in Mexico on his way to the southern border last year. But federal immigration authorities failed to screen him for a credible fear assessment before deporting him back to the same country where he was raped and held for ransom. Last week, District Judge Brian Murphy ordered the administration to 'facilitate' his return — echoing court orders in two other high-profile immigration cases involving 'wrongfully' deported immigrants. '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 wrote. On Wednesday, lawyers for the Department of Justice said Homeland Security officials are preparing to return him to the United States — and potentially release him from custody for humanitarian reasons. A flight crew in Phoenix is working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement 's air division to put him on a charter flight, according to court filings. Murphy's ruling marks at least the third time that the Trump administration has been ordered to return a wrongly deported immigrant. Last month, a Trump-appointed federal judge found that the government's removal of a 20-year-old Venezuelan man named in court documents as 'Cristian' violated a court settlement intended to protect young immigrants who have pending asylum claims. The Supreme Court has also unanimously agreed that the Trump administration 'illegally' deported Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father and husband living in Maryland. Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador as a teenager in 2011. He has been imprisoned in his home country since March 15. More than a month after the highest court's decision, the Trump administration has yet to facilitate his return, and is engaged in a tense legal battle to avoid answering what steps, if any, it is taking to bring him back, and arguing that the administration does not need to answer to questions from a federal judge about its arrangement with El Salvador. The administration has filed a motion to try to dismiss that case altogether. O.C.G.'s case is part of a wider class-action lawsuit targeting the administration's so-called third-country removals, in which immigrants are deported to somewhere other than their home country. Murphy has blocked removing those immigrants without adequate notice — which he alleges the administration defied when authorities sent a group of immigrants to South Sudan. Murphy, who was appointed by Joe Biden, has faced a barrage of attacks from the White House, which labeled him a 'far-left activist' who is trying to 'protect the violent criminal illegal immigrants.' Trump called him 'absolutely out of control' and accused him of 'hurting our country.' This week, the judge accused government attorneys of 'manufacturing chaos' surrounding the case. Immigration officials initially claimed that O.C.G. had agreed to be sent to Mexico, but the administration later admitted in court documents that their claim was based on erroneous information. An immigration official wrote in a sworn statement that 'ICE was unable to identify an officer or officers' who had even asked the man about his credible fear. 'How was this mistake made?' Murphy asked government lawyers during a hearing last week. 'This is a really big deal,' he said. 'It is a big deal to lie to a court under oath. It is an extraordinarily big deal to do so when there are matters of national importance at stake. I take this extremely seriously.' He suggested he could call Homeland Security officials into court to testify under oath. 'While mistakes obviously happen, the events leading up to this decision are troubling,' Murphy wrote in his order on May 23. 'The Court was given false information, upon which it relied twice, to the detriment of a party at risk of serious and irreparable harm.' Lawyers for the Guatemalan man are likely to 'succeed in showing that his removal lacked any semblance of due process,' according to Murphy.
Associated Press
5 days ago
- General
- Associated Press
Trump administration says it's working to return a Guatemalan man deported to Mexico
The Trump administration said in court filings Wednesday that it was working to bring back a Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico in spite of his fears of being harmed there, days after a federal judge ordered the administration to facilitate his return. The man, who is gay, was protected from being returned to his home country under a U.S. immigration judge's order at the time. But the U.S. put him on a bus and sent him to Mexico instead, a removal that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy found likely 'lacked any semblance of due process.' Mexico has since returned him to Guatemala, where he is in hiding, according to court documents. In a court filing Wednesday, government lawyers said that a so-called significant public benefit parole packet had been approved and was awaiting additional approval from Homeland Security Investigations. The designation allows people who aren't eligible to enter the U.S. to do so temporarily, often for reasons related to law enforcement or legal proceedings. Officials in the Phoenix field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, spoke with the man's lawyers over the weekend and are working to bring him back to the U.S. on a plane chartered by ICE, the court filing said. An earlier court proceeding had determined that the man, identified by the initials O.C.G., risked persecution or torture if returned to Guatemala. But he also feared returning to Mexico, where he says he was raped and extorted while seeking asylum in the U.S., according to court documents. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who called Murphy a 'federal activist judge,' said O.C.G. was in the country illegally, was 'granted withholding of removal to Guatemala' and was instead sent to Mexico, which she said was 'a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim.' Murphy's order last Friday adds to a string of findings by federal courts against recent Trump administration deportations. Those have included other deportations to third countries and the erroneous deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran who had lived in Maryland for roughly 14 years, working and raising a family. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S. from a notorious Salvadoran prison, rejecting the White House's claim that it couldn't retrieve him after mistakenly deporting him. Both the White House and the El Salvadoran president have said they are powerless to return him. ___
New York Times
5 days ago
- General
- New York Times
Trump Administration Agrees to Return Guatemalan Man to U.S.
Justice Department lawyers said on Wednesday that the government was taking steps to comply with a court order to facilitate the return of a man who had been deported to Mexico and was then sent to Guatemala. The Guatemalan man, known by the initials O.C.G., had been deported this year despite having told U.S. authorities that he had experienced violence in Mexico and was afraid to go back. Immigration authorities made contact with O.C.G.'s legal team over the weekend and were working to bring him back to the United States on a charter flight, according to the two-page filing in the case before Judge Brian E. Murphy of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts. Late last week, Judge Murphy ordered the government to 'facilitate' O.C.G.'s return to the United States, finding that he was likely to 'succeed in showing that his removal lacked any semblance of due process.' The government's agreement to return O.C.G. represents a substantial de-escalation in a case that is shaping up to be one of the key courtroom battles over President Trump's attempts to conduct mass deportations. It also marks a departure from the more defiant stance that the administration has taken in other immigration matters, including the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Mr. Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador despite an order from an immigration court that he not be sent there, a mistake the government has called an 'administrative error.' In response to an order upheld by the Supreme Court requiring the government to 'facilitate' Mr. Abrego Garcia's return, the Trump administration has said that it cannot bring him back because he is now imprisoned in El Salvador. In 2024, when passing through Mexico on his way to the U.S. border, O.C.G. was kidnapped and raped by a group of men who released him only after his sister sent them money, he has said. An immigration judge who barred authorities from deporting O.C.G. to Guatemala also assured him that he would not be deported to Mexico without further due process. U.S. authorities sent him there anyway. In Mexico, the authorities gave him a choice to be detained for months or return to Guatemala. He chose to return to his home country. He lives alone there, in a house owned by his sister. He avoids going outside and rarely sees his family members. 'Anything could happen to me in the street,' he told the court. 'I am constantly afraid.' He said he lives 'in constant panic and constant fear' of persecution for being gay. 'I can't be gay here, which means I cannot be myself,' he said. 'We are happy to see that D.H.S. is making the necessary arrangements to comply with the court's order,' said Matt Adams, legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, an immigrant advocacy group that represents O.C.G. 'Time is of the essence as O.C.G. remains in hiding until he can be flown out.' O.C.G.'s case is being considered as part of a larger lawsuit that deals with so-called third-country deportations, in which migrants are sent to places other than their home countries, where they do not have legal status. The Trump administration has been negotiating with foreign governments over accepting U.S. deportees, including war-torn nations like Libya and South Sudan, as well as El Salvador, where more than 200 migrants were deported and then detained in a maximum-security prison. Experts say third-country deportations to such countries are part of a larger strategy to scare other immigrants into self-deporting or avoiding the United States altogether. As part of the same case, Judge Murphy is also grappling with the status of six detainees who have been held at an American military base in Djibouti. The men were given less than 24 hours' notice that they were being deported to South Sudan, after an order from Judge Murphy that they be given at least 15 days. All have been convicted by U.S. courts of violent crimes. Last week, Judge Murphy ordered the government to maintain custody of the men so they could have a 'meaningful opportunity' to object to their deportation to the country, which is on the brink of civil war. The conditions of their detention remain unclear. As of Wednesday afternoon, the deportees had not been given the chance to contact their lawyers by phone, as ordered by Judge Murphy last week, according to Trina Realmuto, one of their attorneys. On Tuesday, the government asked the Supreme Court to intervene and pause Judge Murphy's order, which would allow them to send the deportees on to South Sudan. The Supreme Court did not act immediately, and instead gave the deportees' legal team until June 4 to reply.
