Saying it's likely that the deportation of a Guatemalan man "lacked any semblance of due process," a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return. The government had delivered the man, who is gay, to Mexico despite his protestations that he feared for his safety there, the Hill reports. He had argued that he previously had been raped and held for ransom in Mexico, per court documents. Late Friday in Boston, US District Judge Brian Murphy told the administration it must "take all immediate steps," to get the man, who now is in hiding in Guatemala, back to the US. Among Murphy's criticisms of the administration was its accidental revelation of the man's name, though the judge ordered that it use pseudonyms. The case has unfolded this way:
- To the US: The man, called OCG in court papers, entered twice in 2024. The first time, he was deported to Guatemala. The second time, he tried to get to the US through Mexico, where he was held hostage and raped. He was freed when a relative paid ransom, the court documents say.
- In the US: Once he made his way to the US, an immigration judge issued a ruling protecting the man from deportation to Guatemala after finding he was at risk of persecution or torture there.
- To Mexico: The US government put OCG on a bus to Mexico anyway. That prompted Murphy, who was appointed by President Biden, to write Friday of "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."
- In Mexico: Officials there gave OCG the choice of being held for months or allowed to go back to Guatemala, per the New York Times. He chose Guatemala.
- In Guatemala: "Since I arrived here, I have been living in hiding, in constant panic and constant fear," he wrote in a sworn declaration filed this week. "I've been here living this way for over two months."
The administration had maintained that OCG said he had no fear of being in Mexico but last week conceded that was an error. A court filing says the administration was "unable to identify" the immigration officer he supposedly told that, per the Washington Post. The government did not immediately say what its next step will be, though it has argued that the court doesn't have the authority to order OCG's return. This is the third case in which a judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring back a deportee. Murphy alluded to those cases and the administration's pushback in his ruling. "The Court notes that 'facilitate' in this context should carry less baggage than in several other notable cases," he said. (More deportation stories.)
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