A Trump-appointed judge has ordered that yet another man the administration deported to El Salvador must be returned.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher ruled that the Trump administration violated a previous court settlement when it flew an asylum-seeker named “Cristian” in court documents to El Salvador on March 15. It must now “facilitate” Cristian’s return by at least “making a good faith request to the government of El Salvador” to turn him over to American authorities, Gallagher wrote in an order released Wednesday.
The Trump administration is paying El Salvador $6 million to imprison alleged gang members it has deported; the White House has claimed it has no authority to demand that the country return prisoners in its custody.
President Donald Trump appointed Gallagher, a Harvard Law graduate, in 2018 after she spent seven years as a magistrate judge.
Gallagher ruled Cristian’s return is necessary because, as a member of a class action lawsuit filed in 2019 by individuals who arrived in the U.S. as unaccompanied minors and later sought asylum, he was granted protection from deportation until his asylum case is adjudicated.
Gallagher called Cristian’s deportation a “breach of contract.”
Cristian, a Venezuelan accused of being a member of Tren de Aragua, was deported under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law that Trump invoked last month to deport suspected gang members without due process. Cristian, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and hundreds of other alleged Tren de Aragua or MS-13 gang members—mostly Salvadorans and Venezuelans—were flown to an infamous El Salvador prison.
The Trump administration has admitted that Abrego Garcia, 29, was mistakenly sent to El Salvador due to an “administrative error” but has taken no action to bring him back to Maryland despite a court order. An immigration judge’s ruling in 2019 said he should not be deported to El Salvador because he would face persecution there.
MAGA figures have railed that District Judge Paula Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who is presiding over Abrego Garcia’s case, is working to oppose the president more than uphold the law. Gallagher mentioned Abrego Garcia’s case in her ruling Wednesday.
“Like Judge Xinis in the Abrego Garcia matter, this Court will order Defendants to facilitate (Cristian’s) return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement,” she wrote.
Robert Cerna, field office director for enforcement and removal operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Cristian was arrested in Texas in January for possessing cocaine, a felony offense.
That puts Cristian in the alleged criminal minority among those sent to El Salvador, as Bloomberg reported that 90 percent of those deported to the infamous Central American prison had no criminal record in the U.S.
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