SAN DIEGO _ A San Diego federal judge who presided over the lawsuit against Trump University has been assigned the recent high-profile "Dreamer" deportation case.
U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel last year faced the wrath of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, who demanded the judge recuse himself from the case. Trump claimed Curiel's Mexican heritage made him biased against Trump, who had railed against illegal immigration and Mexico during the campaign.
In March, the Indiana-born judge approved a $25 million settlement between the two sides in the class-action suit. Students claimed they were overcharged and that Trump's real estate program did not deliver what it promised.
Now Curiel has been assigned the case of Juan Manuel Montes Bojorquez, 23, who claims he was wrongly deported to Mexico by border agents in Calexico in February. His lawsuit specifically seeks to force the government to release information about his case.
Montes, who came to the U.S. when he was 9 years old, since 2014 has been allowed to live and work in the country under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, whose participants are often called "Dreamers."
Under Trump, the country has experienced a rise in deportations of people who had DACA status but lost it, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed Wednesday that Montes no longer qualified for DACA.
