A Guatemalan man was flown back to the United States after a judge earlier ruled his deportation to Mexico violated a court order and due process rights.
A Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico after entering the United States last year was flown back to the country on June 4, following a federal judge’s order that found the deportation violated his rights.
The man, identified in court documents as O.C.G., had told immigration authorities he feared persecution in Mexico, where he had allegedly previously been raped and kidnapped, according to filings by his legal team.
On May 23, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston ordered the Department of Homeland Security to return O.C.G. after the Justice Department acknowledged its prior claim—that he had not expressed fear of being sent to Mexico—was incorrect.
Murphy’s ruling is part of a broader class action lawsuit filed by O.C.G. and others challenging the U.S. government’s policy of removing non-citizens to countries other than their own without first considering their safety concerns. The injunction currently blocks such deportations without hearings.
Trina Realmuto, an attorney with the National Immigration Litigation Alliance representing O.C.G., said her client arrived in California on a commercial flight and is now in ICE custody, and that he was being transferred to a detention center in Arizona.
Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin, in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, said that “the Trump administration is committed to returning our asylum system to its original intent.”
“America’s asylum system was never intended to be used as a de facto amnesty program or a catch-all, get-out-of-deportation-free card,” she said.
“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, pending his asylum claim. 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.”
By Chase Smith
