Guatemalan deportee back in US after judge orders Trump to facilitate return

A Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico despite stating he feared being persecuted there was flown back to the US on Wednesday after a judge ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.

Judges have directed US President Donald Trump's administration to help return several migrants to the country because they were wrongly deported, and the man's arrival appeared to mark the first time one of those migrants has been able to come back.

US district judge Brian Murphy in Boston on May 23 ordered the Guatemalan man's return after the justice department notified him that its claim that the man had expressly stated he was not afraid of being sent to Mexico was based on erroneous information.

That ruling was the latest instance of a judge ordering the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a migrant swept up in the Republican president's efforts to carry out mass deportations as part of his hardline immigration agenda, following a mistake in an individual's case.

The government likewise made an error with Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador in March despite an order protecting him from removal. He remains there despite a judge ordering the administration to facilitate his return.

By contrast, the Guatemalan man, identified in court papers only as OCG., was able to return on Wednesday on a commercial flight, said Trina Realmuto, a lawyer at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance who represents him.

Unlike Garcia and another man deported to El Salvador who a judge ruled should be returned to the US, OCG was not being detained abroad. In court papers last week, the administration indicated it was working to place OCG onto a charter flight back to the US.

"We can now confirm that he is in ICE custody after arriving in California on a commercial flight and is being transported to a detention facility in Arizona," Realmuto said, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for US department of homeland security, which oversees ICE, in a statement called the judge an "activist" whose ruling gave OCG "an opportunity to prove why he should be granted asylum to a country that he has had no past connection to".

He returned to the US as the administration awaits word on whether the US Supreme Court will lift an injunction Murphy issued in a class action lawsuit by OCG and other migrants designed to protect their due process rights.

That order bars the administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first hearing their concerns about their safety.

Murphy recently concluded the administration violated his order by seeking to deport a group of migrants to South Sudan. They are currently being held in Djibouti while they undergo screening for any fears of being sent to conflict-ridden South Sudan.

According to his lawyers, OCG is a gay man who fled Guatemala in 2024 after facing death threats based on his sexuality. He entered the US through Mexico in May 2024.

Murphy in his ruling said that while an immigration judge in February found OCG deserved protection from being returned to Guatemala, authorities two days later wrongly placed him on a bus to Mexico, where he had previously been raped and kidnapped.

After arriving in Mexico, OCG had to choose between waiting months in detention to apply for asylum in Mexico or return to Guatemala. He chose the latter and went into hiding, his lawyers say.

Reuters