A U.S. federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to assist in the return of a Guatemalan man who was wrongly deported, in defiance of earlier lawful protection. This comes after authorities acknowledged the deportation had been conducted on the basis of erroneous information, reports Reuters.
Boston District Judge Brian Murphy granted the order last Friday. It came after an admission by the U.S. Department of Justice that the man’s legal claims had been dismissed based on factual inaccuracies.
Named in court documents as ‘O.C.G.’, the man is the lead plaintiff in a class-action suit contesting deportation policies on people who are sent back to other than their own nations. Some other migrants with the same kind of story are included in the same lawsuit.
O.C.G. ‘is a gay man’, according to his lawyers, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala in 2024 after receiving death threats because of his sexuality. He entered the U.S. through Mexico in May of that year.
In February, an immigration judge had given him protection from deportation back to Guatemala after an asylum officer found that he had a credible fear of persecution in that country. But only two days later, immigration officials deported him to Mexico, a nation where, Judge Murphy wrote, he had once been kidnapped for ransom and raped.
Pattern of wrongful deportations
This case signals a persistent trend of improper deportations as a result of Trump-era immigration policies. Judge Murphy’s order mirrors previous cases where migrants were deported incorrectly even with the judiciary affording them protection.
In a comparable case, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who lives in Maryland, was deported to El Salvador last March after a court ordered his removal was halted. Even though a judge later told the administration to bring him back, Garcia is still in El Salvador.
Murphy, who was named to the federal bench by President Joe Biden, has consistently ruled against the Department of Homeland Security in cases related to hasty or illegal deportations. His rulings have underscored the importance of providing migrants with a chance to voice their grievances, especially when security is concerned.
