A Guatemalan man who says he was wrongfully deported to Mexico has been returned to the U.S., according to his legal team.
The man’s return marks the first known instances of the Trump administration complying with judicial orders to return a deported migrant, according to CNN.
“O.C.G”, as the man is identified in court documents, says he survived sexual violence and kidnapping in Mexico on his way to the southern border last year. But federal immigration authorities failed to screen him for a credible fear assessment before deporting him back to the same country where he was raped and held for ransom.
He landed in the U.S. on Wednesday and was put in contact with a member of the legal team challenging the Trump administration’s deportations to countries where they have no ties, according to Trina Realmuto, the National Immigration Litigation Alliance executive director.
She told CNN that she expects O.C.G. to be taken into Department of Homeland Security custody now that he’s back in the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy is overseeing litigation challenging the Trump administration’s deportations that send migrants to countries where they have no connections. He ordered O.C.G.’s return to the U.S. last month, ruling that his expulsion “lacked due process.”
When the Trump administration deported O.C.G. to Mexico, they sent him back to the nation where he was assaulted, raped, and held for ransom.
According to Murphy’s ruling, O.C.G. expressed his fears about being sent to Mexico during his immigration hearings, but a judge told him that he could would not be sent there as it is not his native country.
“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 his ruling.
Murphy, who was appointed by Joe Biden, has faced a barrage of attacks from the White House, which labeled him a “far-left activist” who is trying to “protect the violent criminal illegal immigrants.” Trump called him “absolutely out of control” and accused him of “hurting our country.”
This week, the judge accused government attorneys of “manufacturing chaos” surrounding the case.
Just days before Murphy’s ruling, the Trump administration was denied its request to hold an order forcing it to return a 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant wrongly deported to El Salvador.
The Trump administration has, thus far, been slow to comply with judicial orders regarding immigration cases. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher said that Trump officials had taken no steps to comply with her ruling to return the Venezuelan migrant from El Salvador.
The Trump administration was also ordered to return a Maryland man wrongfully deported to El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing that case, said she is also facing inaction from the Trump Justice Department and members of his administration.
