(Headline USA) A federal judge ordered the Trump administration late Friday to facilitate the return of a Guatemalan man it deported to Mexico.
The man was protected from being returned to his home country under a U.S. immigration judge’s order at the time.
But the U.S. put him on a bus and sent him to Mexico instead, a removal that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy found likely “lacked any semblance of due process.”
Mexico has since returned him to Guatemala, where he is in hiding, according to court documents. An earlier court proceeding that determined the man, identified by the initials O.C.G., risked persecution or torture if returned to Guatemala, but he also feared returning to Mexico. He presented evidence of being raped and held for ransom there while seeking asylum in the U.S.
“No one has ever suggested that O.C.G. poses any sort of security threat,” Murphy wrote. “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.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said O.C.G. was in the country illegally, was “granted withholding of removal to Guatemala” and was instead sent to Mexico, which she said was “a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim.”
McLaughlin called the judge a “federal activist judge” and said the administration expects to be vindicated by a higher court.
In his Friday ruling, Murphy nodded to the dispute over the verb “facilitate” in that case and others, saying that returning O.C.G. to the U.S. is not that complicated.
“The Court notes that ‘facilitate’ in this context should carry less baggage than in several other notable cases,” he wrote. “O.C.G. is not held by any foreign government.
Defendants have declined to make any argument that facilitating his return would be costly, burdensome, or otherwise impede the government’s objectives.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
