The Trump administration told a federal judge on Wednesday it is working to charter a plane to return to the U.S. an immigrant from Guatemala who was deported in March without due process and despite fears of persecution.
The Justice Department said in a court filing Wednesday that they are working to return the individual, identified only as O.C.G., to the U.S.
The update is significant and marks the first known instance that the Trump administration appears to be complying with a federal court’s order to return to the U.S. a migrant who was deported in what administration officials have since acknowledged to be the result of erroneous information.
The news comes after U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts ruled last week that the man was deported to Mexico without due process and ordered that the administration secure his return to the United States.
Lawyers for the Trump administration told the court late Wednesday that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations Phoenix Field Office made contact over the weekend with O.C.G.’s attorneys and are “currently working with ICE Air to bring O.C.G. back to the United States on an Air Charter Operations (ACO) flight return leg.”
US JUDGE ACCUSES TRUMP ADMIN OF ‘MANUFACTURING CHAOS’ IN SOUTH SUDAN DEPORTATIONS, ESCALATING FEUD
The update comes after Murphy rejected a request from the Department of Homeland Security to amend his earlier order requiring the Trump administration to “take all immediate steps” to return the individual to the U.S., citing a lack of due process.
Murphy said in the Friday ruling that O.C.G. had not been granted due process nor had he been given a chance to contest his removal to a country where he could face threats of torture, a right afforded under U.S. and international law.
These “reasonable fear interviews” allow migrants a chance to formally seek protection from removal to a country where they face reasonable fears of persecution or torture.
Murphy noted in his ruling that O.C.G. was previously held for ransom and raped in Mexico but was not afforded the chance to assert those fears prior to his removal, according to his attorneys.
“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 said Friday.
IDENTITY OF SECOND DEPORTED MAN WHO JUDGE WANTS RETURNED TO US REVEALED AS TRUMP ADMIN FIGHTS ORDER
“The return of O.C.G. poses a vanishingly small cost to make sure we can still claim to live up to that ideal,” Murphy added.
The Trump administration did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment as to how long it will take to return O.C.G. to the U.S. or if it plans to follow suit in other cases in which a federal judge ordered the administration to return an individual deemed to have been wrongfully deported.
In Maryland, a U.S. judge in Baltimore ordered the administration to return a young migrant deported in March to El Salvador, ruling that his removal violated an earlier settlement agreement struck with DHS.
Separately, Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland has repeatedly sparred with the Trump administration in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian migrant and alleged MS-13 member who was deported from Maryland to El Salvador in March in what officials have acknowledged was an administrative error.
“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 spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement over the weekend.
Read the full article here
