Trump Admin Must Seek Return Of Another Man Who Was Improperly Deported To El Salvador, Judge Rules

The Trump administration must seek to return a second man who was improperly deported from the U.S. to El Salvador in violation of a previous court order, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Maryland-based Trump appointee, ruled that the administration deported a 20-year-old Venezuelan man last month in violation of a legally binding, court-approved settlement agreement reached in a lawsuit last year. Under that settlement, the U.S. agreed not to deport migrants who arrived as unaccompanied minors until their asylum claims are fully adjudicated.

The man, identified in court papers only as “Cristian,” arrived in the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor and sought asylum in December 2022. That claim was still pending when he was deported last month.

The newly revealed improper deportation, which was first reported by ABC News, resembles the high-profile case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was living in Maryland before being deported to El Salvador despite a 2019 immigration court order that barred the U.S. government from sending him there.

The Supreme Court called Abrego Garcia’s deportation “illegal” and upheld a district judge’s order requiring the U.S. to facilitate his return. The Trump administration has resisted doing so, claiming that it has no authority to bring him back, although it recently said the State Department engaged in “appropriate diplomatic discussions” with Salvadoran officials about his case.

Gallagher cited Abrego Garcia’s case in her ruling.

Both Cristian and Abrego Garcia were among hundreds of immigrants loaded hastily onto planes on March 15 and sent to a notorious anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador.

Many of them — including Cristian — were deported under Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used 1798 law that gives the president the authority to swiftly expel foreign invaders during wartime. The Trump administration, often with little public evidence, accused the deportees of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and deemed them “alien enemies.”

The Justice Department argued that Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act superseded the 2024 settlement that protected Cristian from deportation while his asylum claim proceeded.

But Gallagher rejected that argument, ordering the Trump administration “to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to.”

The Biden administration reached the settlement in a class-action lawsuit that challenged a change to asylum policy during Trump’s first term. The settlement applies to a nationwide class of migrants who entered the U.S. before they were 18.

Unlike Abrego Garcia — who has never been charged with any crime — Cristian was convicted in Texas of possessing cocaine, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Robert Cerna. After his conviction, immigration officials detained him in January 2025, during the final days of the Biden administration.

In the Abrego Garcia case, the Trump administration has argued that it could comply with the order to “facilitate” his return without actually asking the government of El Salvador to release him from custody and send him back to the U.S.

Gallagher explicitly rejected that technical and narrow reading of the word “facilitate” in her order on Cristian’s deportation.

“Standing by and taking no action is not facilitation. In prior cases involving wrongfully removed individuals, courts have ordered, and the government has taken, affirmative steps toward facilitating return,” Gallagher wrote. She directed the Trump administration to make “a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody.”

The judge presiding over the Abrego Garcia case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, agreed Wednesday to a one-week delay in an intensive fact-finding inquiry she authorized into the Trump administration’s improper deportation. Her reasons for the move were not made public.

The administration is also facing scrutiny over a potential violation of court orders from a third judge, who has barred all deportations to countries not listed in a migrant’s final removal order. On Wednesday night, the administration acknowledged sending four people to El Salvador on March 31 despite the judge’s order, saying the deportations were carried out by the Pentagon, which government lawyers contend was not covered by the court order.

Lawyers who obtained the settlement reached last year for asylum seekers who entered the U.S. as children complained in a court filing that the Trump administration has refused to say whether “Cristian” is the only person covered by the settlement who has been deported.

“If other Class Members have been removed to El Salvador, they too should be returned,” the attorneys wrote.