A federal judge orders the Trump administration to return a Guatemalan deported to Mexico to the U.S.

A military aircraft waits for migrants to board from a bus at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Tx., Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, before deporting them to Guatemala. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration late Friday to facilitate the return of a Guatemalan man it deported to Mexico in spite of his fears of being harmed there.

The man, who is gay, was protected from being returned to his home country under a U.S. immigration judge’s order at the time. But the U.S. put him on a bus and sent him to Mexico instead, a removal that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy found likely “lacked any semblance of due process.”

Mexico has since returned him to Guatemala, where he is in hiding, according to court documents. An earlier court proceeding that determined the man, identified by the initials O.C.G., risked persecution or torture if returned to Guatemala, but he also feared returning to Mexico. He presented evidence of being raped and held for ransom there while seeking asylum in the U.S.

“No one has ever suggested that O.C.G. poses any sort of security threat,” Murphy wrote. “In general, this case presents no special facts or legal circumstances, only the banal horror of a man being wrongfully loaded onto a bus and sent back to a country where he was allegedly just raped and kidnapped.”

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said O.C.G. was in the country illegally, was “granted withholding of removal to Guatemala” and was instead sent to Mexico, which she said was “a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim.”

McLaughlin called the judge a “federal activist judge” and said the administration expects to be vindicated by a higher court.

Murphy’s order adds to a string of findings by federal courts against recent Trump administration deportations. Those have included other deportations to third countries and the erroneous deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran who had lived in Maryland for roughly 14 years working and raising a family.

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. from a notorious Salvadoran prison, rejecting the White House’s claim that it couldn’t retrieve him after mistakenly deporting him. Both the White House and the El Salvadoran president have said they are powerless to return him. The Trump administration has tried to invoke the state secrets privilege, arguing that releasing details in open court -- or even to the judge in private -- about returning Abrego Garcia to the United States would jeopardize national security.

In his Friday ruling, Murphy nodded to the dispute over the verb “facilitate” in that case and others, saying that returning O.C.G. to the U.S. is not that complicated.

“The Court notes that `facilitate’ in this context should carry less baggage than in several other notable cases,” he wrote. “O.C.G. is not held by any foreign government. Defendants have declined to make any argument that facilitating his return would be costly, burdensome, or otherwise impede the government’s objectives.”

Julie Carr Smyth, The Associated Press