US immigration officials are “working” on flying back a Guatemalan migrant who says he was wrongly deported to Mexico, according to new court filings, in what appears to mark the first time the Trump administration has made plans to bring back a migrant after a judge ordered the administration to facilitate their return.
Phoenix-based immigration officials are “currently working with ICE Air to bring O.C.G. back to the United States on an Air Charter Operations (ACO) flight return leg,” the Justice Department said in the Wednesday court filing, referring to the pseudonym the migrant is using in the case.
US District Judge Brian Murphy, who sits in Boston, ordered O.C.G.’s return last week. The case that Murphy is overseeing concerns the deportation of migrants to “third countries,” or nations that are not their home country.
After entering the US and being deported a first time, the Guatemalan man reentered the US again in 2024, at which point he sought asylum, having suffered “multiple violent attacks” in Guatemala, according to court documents.
On his way to the US during the second trip, O.C.G. said, he was raped and held for ransom in Mexico –– a detail he made known to an immigration judge during proceedings. In 2025, a judge ruled he should not be sent back to his native country, the documents say.
Two days after the judge ruled he should not be removed to Guatemala, the government deported him to Mexico, according to Murphy’s order. O.C.G. had claimed in the case that he had not been given the opportunity before his deportation to communicate his fear of being sent to Mexico and that his pleas before his removal to speak to an attorney were rejected. The government had been arguing in the case that O.C.G. had communicated to officials before his removal that he had no fear about being deported to Mexico. But recently, the government had to back down from that claim, acknowledging that it could not identify an immigration official who could substantiate that version of events.
Before Murphy’s ruling, O.C.G. filed a declaration that said he was now in Guatemala, where he has been “living in hiding, in constant panic and constant fear.”
O.C.G.’s removal to Mexico and subsequently Guatemala likely “lacked due process,” Murphy said in his ruling. During his immigration proceedings, O.C.G. said he feared being sent to Mexico, but the judge told him that since Mexico isn’t his native country, he can’t be sent there without additional steps in the process, the ruling said.
“Those necessary steps, and O.C.G.’s pleas for help, were ignored. As a result, O.C.G. was given up to Mexico, which then sent him back to Guatemala, where he remains in hiding today,” Murphy said.
Murphy’s ruling came days after an appeals court denied the Trump administration’s request to put on hold an order requiring it to facilitate the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant wrongly deported to El Salvador earlier this year.
During a hearing earlier this month, US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher said officials had done virtually nothing to comply with her directive that they “facilitate” the migrant’s return to the US from the mega-prison in El Salvador where he was sent so he can have his asylum application resolved.
In a similar case, the Trump administration has been in a standoff with another federal judge in Maryland over her order that it facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was mistakenly deported in March.
US District Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing the case, has faced repeated stonewalling from the Justice Department and members of the Trump administration, who have continued to thwart an “expedited fact-finding” search for answers on what officials are doing to facilitate his return from El Salvador.
CNN’s Karina Tsui contributed to this report.
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