A federal judge refused on Tuesday to wipe away her order that the Trump administration “facilitate” the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker deported to El Salvador but agreed to put the directive on hold so the government can appeal it.
The decision by US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2019, comes nearly two weeks after she first ruled that the government had violated a court settlement protecting some young migrants with pending asylum claims when it deported the man, who is referred to only as “Cristian” in court filings, in mid-March.
Since that time, administration officials have done virtually nothing to comply with her directive that it “facilitate” Cristian’s return to the US from the mega-prison in El Salvador where he was sent so he can have his asylum application resolved.
The Trump administration asked the judge earlier this week to wipe away her April 23 order, arguing the government had made an “indicative decision” that Cristian’s asylum application would be denied if he returned to the US based on its claim that he’s a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
But Gallagher on Tuesday noted that the “indicative decision” is far from a final decision on Cristian’s asylum application and that such a determination “essentially prejudges the outcome of the asylum proceeding.”
Speaking from the bench during a hearing in Baltimore, Gallagher was critical of the administration’s apparent willingness to trample over Cristian’s due process rights – zeroing in on an issue that has been at the center of Trump’s push to quickly deport scores of migrants from the US.
“It may be that the result here for Cristian is no asylum,” she said. “But the settlement agreement says that we don’t just get to skip to the end.”
“Process is important,” Gallagher continued. “We go through the process; people are entitled to that.”
Though Gallagher said she would not wipe away her order, she agreed to put it on hold for 48 hours to give the Justice Department time to appeal it to the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
Cristian was part of the group of migrants deported in March under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime authority that Trump invoked so he could quickly remove some migrants. But Gallagher has noted that the settlement agreement Cristian is part of, which was finalized in November, did not include an exception for any use of that law.
In a similar case that has garnered more public attention, the Trump administration has been in a weekslong standoff with another federal judge in Maryland over her order that it facilitate the return of a man who was unlawfully deported in March.
That man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was also sent to the El Salvador prison, known as CECOT, in violation of a 2019 court order that said he could not be deported to that country. The judge overseeing that case is currently conducting an expedited fact-finding process to determine what the administration is doing to comply with her directive.
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