A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump’s administration to return a Guatemalan man who was “wrongfully” deported to Mexico.
The man, referred to as “O.C.G” in court documents, says he fled Guatemala in April 2024. While passing through Mexico, he says he was raped, targeted for being gay and held prisoner until his sister paid a ransom. Now, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy says he must be returned to the U.S.
“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 in a Friday evening ruling.
The man has no known criminal history, and no one has “ever suggested that O.C.G. poses any sort of security threat,” Murphy wrote.
Murphy also says he received false information from government attorneys.
Immigration officials initially claimed that he 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 on Wednesday.
“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 on Friday. “The Court was given false information, upon which it relied, twice, to the detriment of a party at risk of serious and irreparable harm.”
Murphy added that the man’s attorneys are likely to succeed in arguing he wasn’t given proper due process, which is required under law.
“Defendants’ retraction of their prior sworn statement makes inexorable the already-strong conclusion that O.C.G. is likely to succeed in showing that his removal lacked any semblance of due process,” Murphy wrote.
When reached for comment, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told The Independent that Americans elected “President Trump — not random local judges with their own liberal agenda — to run the country.”
“These unelected judges have no right to stop the Trump Administration from exercising their rightful control over immigration policy and national security policy,” Jackson said.
Murphy’s ruling marks 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 is also embroiled in legal battles against international college students targeted for deportation over their pro-Palestinian activism, which government officials claim poses a threat to national security and foreign affairs.
Columbia University scholar Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident with no criminal record, was detained in March for his participation in pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
Khalil’s wife gave birth a month after his arrest. He held his newborn son for the first time from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center this week.
Several other students have been released from ICE detention while their legal battles play out. Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk, Columbia grad Mohsen Mahdawi and Georgetown postdoctoral scholar Badar Khan Suri were released in recent weeks after federal judges questioned the constitutionality of their arrests.
On Friday, a federal judge blasted the Trump administration’s attempts to stop Harvard University from enrolling international students as a “blatant violation of the Constitution.”
Democrats find unlikely defender over Biden decline revelations
Trump gives rambling speech about trophy wives, golf and Al Capone at West Point
A federal judge orders the Trump administration to return a Guatemalan deported to Mexico to the US
In their words: How recent presidents have honored America's fallen on Memorial Day
Fetterman says he’s doing more Senate work amid mental health doubts
Inside Trump’s meme coin gala that served food ‘worse than Spirit Airlines’
