The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that yet another wrongly deported immigrant must be returned to the United States to receive due process.
Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, 31, to El Salvador minutes after the Second Circuit ordered that he remain in the U.S.—and despite the government having assured the court it would hold off on his removal until at least the following day.
The government chalked the wrongful removal up to “a confluence of administrative errors”—though Politico reports that the Department of Homeland Security has said there was “no error” in his deportation, alleging that Melgar-Salmeron is a member of MS-13.
In a Tuesday ruling, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled that the government must facilitate Melgar-Salmeron’s return.
The judges, one of whom was appointed by Trump in his first term, also gave the government a one-week deadline to file a document clarifying Melgar-Salmeron’s “current physical location and custodial status” as well as “what steps the Government will take, and when, to facilitate his return to the United States.”
The Second Circuit judges in their Tuesday decision cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, in which the high court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
Melgar-Salmeron’s is just the latest instance in which courts have had to step in to rein in Trump’s wanton deportation campaign. Politico reports that Melgar-Salmeron’s is the fourth case—Abrego Garcia’s being the most famous—of federal courts ordering the administration to return illegally or improperly deported immigrants to the United States.
The post Trump Must Return Another Wrongly Deported Man as Legal Blows Pile Up appeared first on New Republic.
