The U.S. government has un-deported a Guatemalan man that the Trump administration admitted it wrongly sent to Mexico earlier this year, according to the man’s lawyer.
The return marks a major break for an administration that has refused to reverse deportations in a number of other high-profile cases, including ousters to El Salvador and South Sudan.
The migrant, identified as OCG in court documents to protect his identity, was in the U.S. illegally and was ordered deported under the regular immigration system. But an immigration judge had ruled that he couldn’t be sent back to Guatemala because he could be persecuted or tortured.
The Trump administration instead sent him to Mexico — but never checked with him beforehand to see if he had a fear of persecution in that country as well.
He quickly fled to Guatemala, where he went into hiding until Homeland Security brought him back on Wednesday, said Trina Realmuto, his lawyer at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.
She said OCG was paroled into the U.S. That means he still lacks a legal visa to be here but has a tentative legal status while his case proceeds.
“The process was the same process that DHS has employed to return others under prior administrations,” she said.
Asked why the administration agreed to his return while battling others, Ms. Realmuto said it was because OCG was “in hiding in Guatemala, not locked up in a Salvadoran prison or held in a shipping container in Djibouti.”
Even as it brought OCG back, Homeland Security blasted the judge who’d overseen the case and ordered the return.
“The person in question was an illegally present alien who was granted withholding of removal to Guatemala,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “He was instead removed to Mexico, a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim. Yet, this federal activist judge ordered us to bring him back, so he can have an opportunity to prove why he should be granted asylum to a country that he has had no past connection to.”
The case gained intrigue after the government admitted it misled U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy.
Initially the government said OCG had been asked if he feared going to Mexico. A notation to that effect was in his file.
But later the government admitted it couldn’t find anyone who’d actually asked the question, and it couldn’t say how the notation got added.
Judge Murphy has ordered the government to explain itself.
“This is a really big deal. It’s a really big deal to lie to the court under oath,” he told a Justice Department lawyer. “I could not take this more seriously.”
Judge Murphy is also in charge of the case of eight migrants whom the U.S. was trying to deport to South Sudan last month. The judge halted those deportations in transit, saying the migrants weren’t given full due process.
Rather than bring them back, Homeland Security is now holding the eight in a shipping container at an American military base in Djibouti, where they — and the deportation officers guarding them — risk rocket attacks from Yemen rebels, and are getting sick from noxious fumes from burn pits near the base.
Another federal judge in Maryland has ordered the un-deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. The U.S. initially admitted he was deported to that country in error, given that an immigration judge had ruled he faced torture.
But he was sent anyway in March as part of three flights of people taken to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.
Many of those were Venezuelans whom the U.S. says are part of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Yet another federal judge has ruled they were sent without full due process. He has ordered the government to come up with a way to give them new hearings — though he’s stopped short of ordering they all be brought back.
