CNN
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A Guatemalan national who says he was wrongfully deported to Mexico is back in the United States, his legal team told CNN, in what appears to mark the first time the Trump administration has brought back a migrant after a judge ordered the administration to facilitate their return.
O.C.G., a pseudonym the migrant is using in the case, landed in the United States on Wednesday and made contact with a member of the litigation team challenging the Trump administration’s moves to send migrants to countries where they have no ties, according to Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.
The team expects he will be taken into the custody of the Department of Homeland Security, though it’s unclear where he’ll be detained, Realmuto told CNN.
CNN has reached out to DHS for comment.
US District Judge Brian Murphy – who is overseeing a case concerning migrants being deported to countries that are not their home country – ordered O.C.G’s return last month, ruling that his removal to Mexico, and subsequently Guatemala, likely “lacked due process.”
After entering the US and being deported a first time, O.C.G. 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. And just two days after, the government deported him to Mexico, according to Murphy’s order.
O.C.G. has claimed 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 initially argued that O.C.G. had communicated to officials before his removal that he had no fear about being deported to Mexico, but it recently backed down from that claim after it could not identify an immigration official who could substantiate it.
According to Murphy’s ruling, O.C.G. said during his immigration proceedings that 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.
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 last month, US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher said officials had done virtually nothing to comply with her directive that they “facilitate” that 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 Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Kaanita Iyer and Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.
