A federal judge on April 23 ordered the U.S. government to facilitate the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan native from El Salvador to the United States, ruling that the deportation of the man violated a settlement that had been reached in a class action case.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removed the Venezuelan man, who is referred to in court documents by the pseudonym Cristian, to El Salvador in March, according to court filings.
“This court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement,” U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher wrote in a 19-page decision.
Lawyers for the man and other illegal immigrants said that the deportation violated a settlement that had been reached in the case, which was brought by people who entered the United States as unaccompanied minors, filed asylum applications, and had not had their applications adjudicated.
Under the settlement, the U.S. government agreed not to remove the illegal immigrants until U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) made a final determination on the asylum applications.
Cristian’s application, filed in December 2022 when he turned 18, has yet to be adjudicated by the agency, lawyers representing him told the court. His interview has not yet been scheduled.
The lawyers asked Gallagher to enter an order requiring the U.S. government to return the man to the United States.
Robert Cerna, an ICE official, said in a filing that Cristian was convicted in a Texas court in January of the felony of cocaine possession and that he was transferred to federal custody in March, based on the finding that he was in the United States illegally and had been convicted of a drug offense.
The man was deported on March 15 under President Donald Trump’s declaration that the Tren de Aragua gang had invaded the United States, Cerna said. The declaration directed officials to remove Tren De Aragua members.
In another filing, government lawyers stated that the deportation did not violate the settlement because of his designation as an alien enemy under Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.
Gallagher, the judge, said in her ruling that the settlement does not exclude immigrants who are designated as enemies under the law.
“Cristian remains a Class Member and is still entitled to all rights afforded to him under the Settlement Agreement,” she wrote.
The judge ordered the government to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States.
“Defendants have breached the terms of the Settlement Agreement by removing at least one Class Member from the United States while his asylum application remains pending with USCIS,” she ruled. “It is an axiomatic principle of contract law that when a defendant breaches a contract, that defendant must restore the situation that existed before the breach.”
Gallagher pointed to another case playing out in federal court in Maryland that involves the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, to his native country.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in that case ordered the government to facilitate the return of Garcia to the United States, since he had a withholding of removal order that prohibited him from being sent to El Salvador.
Garcia remains in El Salvador. Xinis on April 23 paused a discovery order in the case based on information shared in sealed filings.
