Judge orders Trump administration to return Guatemala man to the United States: NPR

A military plane awaits immigration boarded a bus in Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, on January 30, 2025, and then deported it to Guatemala. Christian Chavez/AP Closed subtitles

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Christian Chavez/AP

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to promote the return of a Guatemalan man late Friday, expelling from Mexico despite fears of being hurt there.

The gay man was protected from being returned to his homeland under the orders of the then-U.S. immigration judge. But the United States sent him on the bus and then sent him to Mexico, a dismissal discovered by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, which could "lack the appearance of any proper procedure."

Mexico has since sent him back to Guatemala, where he hid, according to court documents. An earlier court lawsuit that identified a person with the OCG acronym that risked persecution or torture if he returned to Guatemala, but he was also worried about returning to Mexico. He provided evidence of being raped and possessing ransom while seeking asylum in the United States

“No one suggested that OCG poses any kind of security threat,” Murphy wrote. “In general, the case did not raise special facts or legal circumstances, and only one man was mistakenly loaded onto a bus and sent back to a country where he was allegedly raped and kidnapped.”

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said the OCG was illegal in the country and was "granted for removal from detaining to Guatemala" and instead sent to Mexico, which she said was "a third option for him to be safe and to wait for his asylum claim."

McLaughlin called the judge a "federal activist judge" and said the government is expected to defend it by the High Court.

Murphy's order adds to a series of federal court investigations into the recent Trump administration's deportation. These include other deportations, as well as the wrong deportation of El Abrego Garcia of El Salvador, who lived in Maryland for about 14 years and raised a family.

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to promote Abrego Garcia's return to the United States from the infamous El Salvador prison, refusing the White House to claim he could not be retrieved after wrongly expelling him. Both the White House and the El Salvador president say they can do nothing. The Trump administration has tried to invoke state secret privileges, believing that it would endanger national security by releasing details to judges in the open court or even privately to get Abreg Garcia back to the United States.

In Friday's ruling, Murphy snuggled the controversy over the verb "promotion", in which and other cases, he said returning OCG to the United States was not that complicated.

"The court noted that in this case, the 'promoted' baggage should be less than several other notable cases," he wrote. "The OCG is not held by any foreign government. The defendant refused to make any arguments that promote his return, which would be expensive, cumbersome, or otherwise hinder the government's goals."