WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s administration must facilitate the return of a second man wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador, a federal judge has ruled, deepening a standoff between the courts and White House over the president’s radical immigration policies.
District Judge Stephanie Gallagher said Wednesday the 20-year-old Venezuelan, along with multiple other migrants, was protected by a 2024 class action settlement prohibiting the deportation of migrants who arrived as unaccompanied minors until their asylum claims are fully adjudicated.
His case comes amid a mounting political row over the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran returned to his native country and still imprisoned there, despite the US Supreme Court ordering the government to facilitate his return.
The United States has paid El Salvador millions of dollars to lock up scores of migrants it says are criminals and gang members, in a maximum security prison with a history of alleged human rights violations.
Abrego Garcia, who has not been charged with any crime, was detained in Maryland last month and expelled to El Salvador along with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans who were deported shortly after Trump invoked a rarely used wartime authority.
The Trump administration has claimed that it doesn’t have the power to bring him back, raising fears that its defiance of the Supreme Court was placing the country on the cusp of a constitutional crisis.
Gallagher, a Maryland-based Trump appointee, said she concurred with the ruling in Abrego Garcia’s case that “facilitation” meant taking concrete steps to bring wrongly deported migrants back to the United States.
The Venezuelan man — identified in court papers as “Cristian” — came to the United States as an unaccompanied minor and sought asylum in December 2022. His case was still pending when he was deported in March.
“Standing by and taking no action is not facilitation. In prior cases involving wrongfully removed individuals, courts have ordered, and the government has taken, affirmative steps toward facilitating return,“ Gallagher said.
