Judge presses Trump administration on returning second wrongly deported man

A federal judge in Maryland refused Tuesday to lift her order requiring the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a Venezuelan man whom officials deported to El Salvador nearly two months ago in violation of a legal settlement.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher rejected government arguments that retrieving the man – a 20-year-old identified in court papers only as “Cristian” – was pointless because a Department of Homeland Security agency determined last week that he would not qualify for asylum anyway.

The Trump administration has also argued that it no longer has the power to bring the man back because he is in the custody of a foreign nation – the same stance they have taken in the case of Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran national who also was deported in violation of a court order.

The Venezuelan man’s asylum claim was pending when he was deported in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, along with 137 other Venezuelans whom the Trump administration accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Abrego García, too, was taken to that Salvadoran prison, but under a different deportation authority because he is not Venezuelan.

Gallagher, in a ruling last month, concluded that Cristian should have been shielded from deportation as a class member in a legal settlement she has overseen since last year. As part of that deal, the government agreed to allow certain migrants who arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors to remain in the country as they pursue asylum claims.

The judge ordered the government to take immediate steps to facilitate Cristian’s return, including making “a good faith request … to the government of El Salvador to release [him] to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States.”

The Justice Department has not indicated whether officials have made any effort to comply with that order. In the run-up to a Tuesday hearing in Baltimore, government lawyers urged Gallagher to withdraw her ruling.

“Cristian is currently in the custody of a foreign sovereign,” Justice Department lawyer Richard Ingebretsen wrote in a court filing Monday. The U.S. government “lack[s] the power to direct his return.”

In Abrego García’s case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who is based in Greenbelt, Maryland, has sparred with the administration for weeks over what she has deemed a lack of compliance with her orders to bring him back. An appeals court panel backed Xinis’s position last month, balking at what it described as the administration’s claim that it has the “right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process.”

In his court filing to Gallagher, Ingebretsen cited an “indicative ruling” that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued Thursday – more than a week after Gallagher’s initial order to bring Cristian back – effectively denying his asylum claims. The ruling cited the 20-year-old’s alleged Tren de Aragua ties and the fact that he had been serving a jail sentence for cocaine possession in Houston shortly before he was handed over to immigration authorities.

Bringing him back to the United States at this point, Ingebretsen wrote, would be “the most empty gesture, but also a very challenging one.”

Gallagher, in refusing to change her mind, noted that due to his premature deportation, the man did not have the opportunity to present his case for asylum before USCIS reached its decision.

The judge agreed to stay her order for Cristian’s return for 48 hours to allow the government a chance to appeal. Should they decline to do so or should their appeal fail, she added, she would impose deadlines for the government to show it was taking steps to comply with her ruling.

An attorney for Cristian did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday.