The Trump administration told a federal judge this week that it is working to bring back an illegal immigrant who had been wrongly removed to Mexico without ever being asked if he had a fear of being sent there.
The Department of Homeland Security has already prepared “parole” documents to bring the man, identified in court documents only by initials OCG, back into the U.S. The government is now working on a suitable flight.
The case marks a rare admission of wrong on the part of the new government as it pursues President Trump’s aggressive deportation orders.
Homeland Security initially said officers had checked with the man to see if he had a problem with being deported to Mexico. Department systems said he answered in the negative.
But later the department said it appeared that notation was in error and it could not find anyone who had actually asked the man.
“This is a really big deal. It’s a really big deal to lie to the court under oath,” U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy told the administration in a hearing last week. “I could not take this more seriously.”
OCG is from Guatemala and had been ordered deported but had been granted withholding of removal because he faced danger if sent home.
Trump officials went looking for what’s known as a “third country” to take him, and said Mexico agreed.
But OCG had also had been kidnapped and raped in Mexico before, which made his deportation to that country worrying.
Indeed, his lawyers told the court he has already fled Mexico to go to Guatemala, where he was in hiding and paralyzed with fear.
Judge Murphy, a Biden appointee who serves in Massachusetts, is overseeing a nationwide case involving illegal immigrants who cannot be sent to their home countries and whom the administration is seeking third countries to take them.
In addition to OCG, the judge is currently probing the handling of six migrants the U.S. tried to deport last week to South Sudan.
Judge Murphy said the administration didn’t give them proper “due process” because it left them with less than 24 hours to object to being sent to South Sudan.
The administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in and put a hold on the judge’s ruling, saying he’s meddling in tricky foreign policy and national security matters.
