A federal judge ordered the Trump administration late Friday night to facilitate the return of a Guatemalan man who had been deported to Mexico, despite fearing persecution and having told U.S. authorities about the violence he had experienced there.
The man, known by the initials O.C.G., is gay and is now living in hiding in Guatemala, “in constant panic and constant fear,” according to a sworn declaration. “I can’t be gay here, which means I cannot be myself.”
The ruling, by Judge Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court in Boston, criticized the government for first claiming that O.C.G. had said he was not afraid of being sent to Mexico, where he said he was raped and held captive, but later admitting that it was “unable to identify” the officials to whom he had supposedly made that statement.
Judge Murphy also found that O.C.G. was likely to “succeed in showing that his removal lacked any semblance of due process.”
The decision added another flashpoint to the high-stakes battle over President Trump’s deportation policies playing out across the federal courts. A string of judges has faulted the administration for a lack of adequate due process or otherwise carrying out deportations in ways that exceed the president’s authority. Mr. Trump and his aides, in turn, have questioned the authority of courts to hear such cases and even called for the impeachment of judges who rule against them.
Perhaps the case closest to O.C.G.’s is that of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a mistakenly deported Maryland man. It raises questions about the likelihood of O.C.G.’s return to the United States, despite Judge Murphy’s order. In both cases, a federal judge has instructed the Trump administration to correct its own admitted mistake and seek the men’s return. Mr. Abrego Garcia remains in a prison in El Salvador.
In Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s order for the government to “facilitate” his return but stopped short of endorsing the judge’s call to “effectuate” it. The government has seized on that distinction, saying it lacks the authority to return Mr. Abrego Garcia because El Salvador maintains custody over him. Mr. Trump himself has said he “could” arrange his release with a phone call.
Judge Murphy took pains to acknowledge this distinction and the constitutional limitations on the judiciary’s ability to direct the conduct of the executive branch overseas. But the word “facilitate,” he wrote, “should carry less baggage” in O.C.G.’s case because he “is not held by any foreign government.”
The judge also ordered the government to investigate and report in more detail on how it had come to claim that O.C.G. did not fear being deported to Mexico, after a Department of Homeland Security official said the statement was based on data from a software tool called the ENFORCE Alien Removal Module. “It really is a big deal to lie to a court under oath,” Judge Murphy said at a hearing on Wednesday.
The claim that O.C.G. did not fear deportation was not the government’s only mistake in the case. Another government filing, which was quickly retracted, mistakenly revealed O.C.G.’s full name, which “further exacerbates the risk of persecution,” his lawyers asserted to the court. Judge Murphy called that error a “bell that perhaps cannot be unrung given the permanent nature of the internet.”
In his declarations, O.C.G. recounted leaving Guatemala for the United States in March 2024, being arrested and sent back, and then trying again. The second time, he said, he was kidnapped and raped by a group of men who released him only after his sister sent them money.
After he reached the United States in May 2024, an immigration judge assured him that he would not be sent back to Mexico without additional due process. Nevertheless, Judge Murphy found, U.S. immigration authorities put O.C.G. on a bus to Mexico, where he was given a choice to be detained for months or return to Guatemala. He chose to go to his home country.
He lives alone, in a house owned by his sister. He avoids going outside and rarely sees his family members. “Anything could happen to me in the street,” he told the court. “I am constantly afraid.”
O.C.G. is one of four pseudonymous plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit that seeks to limit the Trump administration’s ability to deport immigrants without giving them an opportunity to contest their removal on the grounds that they might be at risk of persecution or torture. That opportunity is required by an international treaty to which the United States is a party.
Lawyers for the class are also seeking the return of eight men, all convicted of serious crimes in the United States, who apparently arrived at an American base in Djibouti on Wednesday and are believed to have been held there since. The administration had sought to deport them to South Sudan, which is on the brink of civil war, but Judge Murphy ordered the U.S. government to retain custody of them for now. Little is known about the conditions that the men are being held in.
The White House has called the men “monsters” and Judge Murphy, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last year, a “far-left activist judge.”
On Wednesday afternoon, after a chaotic remote hearing and after a daylong proceeding in court, Judge Murphy ordered the government to make arrangements for the men to be able to contact their lawyers by phone.
As of Friday evening, that had not happened, according to Trina Realmuto, one of the lawyers who brought the suit. The government did file a new declaration late Friday, from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, acknowledging that the flight carrying the eight men had used facilities at “the only U.S. base on the African continent.”
Mr. Rubio expressed concerns that Judge Murphy’s orders could strain diplomatic relations with both Libya and Djibouti, as well as his desire to “maintain effective foreign policy engagements in the region without judicial interference.”
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