Trump administration returns migrant hastily deported to Mexico back to the US

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - WASHINGTON — A Guatemalan national who says he was wrongfully deported to Mexico is back in the United States, his legal team told CNN, in what appears to mark the first time the Trump administration has brought back a migrant after a judge ordered the administration to facilitate their return.

O.C.G., a pseudonym the migrant is using in the case, landed in the United States on Wednesday and made contact with a member of the litigation team challenging the Trump administration’s moves to send migrants to countries where they have no ties, according to Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.

He is now in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s custody, Realmuto told CNN.

The Trump administration said in court filings last week that it was “working” on flying back O.C.G. after resisting similar orders to facilitate deported migrants’ returns in other cases.

“The person in question was an illegally present alien who was granted withholding of removal to Guatemala. He was instead removed to Mexico, a safe third option for him,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to CNN on Wednesday. “Yet, this federal activist judge ordered us to bring him back, so he can have an opportunity to prove why he should be granted asylum to a country that he has had no past connection to.”

“The Trump administration is committed to returning our asylum system to its original intent,” she said.

US District Judge Brian Murphy – who is overseeing a case concerning migrants being deported to countries that are not their home country – ordered O.C.G’s return last month, ruling that his removal to Mexico, and subsequently Guatemala, likely “lacked due process.”

After entering the US and being deported a first time, O.C.G. reentered the US again in 2024, at which point he sought asylum, having suffered “multiple violent attacks” in Guatemala, according to court documents.

On his way to the US during the second trip, O.C.G. said, he was raped and held for ransom in Mexico –– a detail he made known to an immigration judge during proceedings.

In 2025, a judge ruled he should not be sent back to his native country, the documents say. And just two days after, the government deported him to Mexico, according to Murphy’s order.

O.C.G. was later removed to Guatemala, where he filed a declaration last month that he was “living in hiding, in constant panic and constant fear.”

He has claimed that he had not been given the opportunity before his deportation to communicate his fear of being sent to Mexico and that his pleas before his removal to speak to an attorney were rejected.

The government had initially argued that O.C.G. had communicated to officials before his removal that he had no fear about being deported to Mexico, but it recently backed down from that claim after it could not identify an immigration official who could substantiate it.

According to Murphy’s ruling, O.C.G. said during his immigration proceedings that he feared being sent to Mexico, but the judge told him that since Mexico isn’t his native country, he can’t be sent there without additional steps in the process.

Murphy’s ruling came days after an appeals court denied the Trump administration’s request to put on hold an order requiring it to facilitate the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant wrongly deported to El Salvador earlier this year.

During a hearing last month, US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher said officials had done virtually nothing to comply with her directive that they “facilitate” that migrant’s return to the US from the mega-prison in El Salvador where he was sent so he can have his asylum application resolved.

In a similar case, the Trump administration has been in a standoff with another federal judge in Maryland over her order that it facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was mistakenly deported in March.

US District Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing the case, has faced repeated stonewalling from the Justice Department and members of the Trump administration, who have continued to thwart an “expedited fact-finding” search for answers on what officials are doing to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador. — CNN