The Trump administration has returned a Guatemalan man who was improperly deported to Mexico, obeying a federal judge’s order that he be brought back to the United States to receive due process.
The man, identified in court papers only as O.C.G., is bound for an immigration detention facility in Arizona, his attorney Trina Realmuto confirmed, while he awaits further immigration proceedings ordered by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, a Massachusetts-based appointee of President Joe Biden.
The administration signaled last week that it was working to arrange O.C.G.’s return. The New York Times first reported that O.C.G. was back in the United States.
Although O.C.G. is a Guatemalan national, an immigration judge in February blocked his deportation there over O.C.G.’s fear of persecution in his native country. The Trump administration then abruptly deported him to Mexico.
But in a class action lawsuit, O.C.G. said immigration officials never asked whether he had any similar fear of persecution in Mexico, a country where he says he has been raped and targeted for being gay. As a result, O.C.G. accepted an offer from Mexico to be deported to Guatemala, where he says he has been living in hiding ever since.
Initially, the Trump administration contested O.C.G.’s account, relying on a sworn statement from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official to insist that O.C.G. was given a chance to express fear of deportation to Mexico and said he had no concerns. But officials later retracted that account, saying it was based on an erroneous note in an ICE database.
Murphy quickly ordered the Department of Homeland Security to facilitate O.C.G.’s return to the United States. Though it is reminiscent of similar cases in which judges have ordered the return of wrongly deported immigrants — like Kilmar Abrego Garcia — O.C.G.’s return was less cumbersome to arrange because he was not incarcerated in Guatemala.
Department of Homeland Security officials used the development to lob new attacks at Murphy, who they have criticized for issuing a sweeping ruling blocking so-called “third country” deportations to places other than an immigrant’s native country, without a chance to assert fear of torture or persecution.
“America’s asylum system was never intended to be used as a de facto amnesty program or a catch-all, get-out-of-deportation-free card,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, calling Mexico a “safe third option” for O.C.G. “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 Trump administration is committed to returning our asylum system to its original intent.”