The Trump-appointed judge stopped short of launching contempt proceedings against the administration.
A man that the Trump administration improperly deported to El Salvador in March — despite an ongoing effort to claim asylum in the United States — is now missing in Venezuela, according to a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher described the parties’ current knowledge of the whereabouts of the man, known in court papers as “Cristian,” in a ruling that described repeated violations of her orders by the Trump administration.
The Trump administration said the loss of communication between Cristian and his attorneys was evidence of the man’s desire to remain in Venezuela. But Gallagher said it was “equally possible” that Cristian “has been the victim of the anticipated violence that caused him to seek asylum in the United States.”
“This Court … has seen no evidence that the United States government ever made a good faith request to the government of El Salvador for Cristian’s return,” wrote Gallagher, a Trump appointee based in Maryland, in the 15-page decision. “This Court has grave concerns about the government’s apparent willingness to disregard this Court’s orders.”
Gallagher, however, stopped short of launching contempt proceedings, saying the complexities of the case made such an undertaking unwarranted. Cristian is part of a class action lawsuit stemming from a Biden-era settlement requiring the administration to resolve asylum claims for certain immigrants who arrived in the United States as minors before initiating deportation proceedings. Lawyers in the suit said Cristian’s abrupt deportation in March violated the settlement and they have been seeking his return.
The judge noted that her April 23 order for the Trump administration to facilitate the man’s return to the United States would have effectively required Secretary of State Marco Rubio to engage in diplomatic communications with the government of El Salvador. But Gallagher said she could not fairly initiate criminal contempt proceedings because the State Department was not a party to the lawsuit.
“This Court cannot see a circumstance where it could impose criminal contempt upon a government agency or official with no authority to convey specific communications directly to El Salvador,” Gallagher wrote.
Still, the judge wrote that she had wrongly presumed that a federal agency would make its best efforts to effectuate “its sister agencies’” compliance with a federal court order, and took issue with the administration’s decision to prioritize a planned prisoner swap between the U.S., Venezuela and El Salvador over court orders.
“This Court certainly hoped, in entering the April 23 Order, that events would unfold in that manner and that the federal government as a whole would undertake compliance efforts,” Gallagher added. “Its hopes were dashed.”
She also noted that the administration repeatedly defied her orders for regular status updates on efforts to locate and facilitate the man’s return, but she said those administrative violations were not sufficient to ignite criminal contempt proceedings.
Gallagher distinguished her order from a decision by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who decided on Wednesday to resume stalled contempt proceedings against Trump administration officials in a similar lawsuit — stemming from the same set of deportation flights in which Cristian was whisked to El Salvador.
The Department of Homeland Security and State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
POLITICO previously identified Cristian as a man named Daniel Lozano-Camargo, a Venezuelan in his early 20s living in Houston at the time he was arrested and deported to El Salvador along with more than 100 men subject to President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act in March.
Trump claimed the men were all members of a violent transnational gang, Tren de Aragua, but many have contested the claim and courts — including the Supreme Court — have found they were denied due process to challenge the government’s assertion before they were sent to a notorious anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador.
All of the men were subsequently returned to Venezuela as part of a U.S.-brokered prisoner swap. Now Cristian is in the very country he fled as a child. Gallagher indicated that his lawyers lost touch with him while working to determine whether he wished to return to the United States to resume his fight for asylum and receive the due process he was denied.
“As this Court has already found, Cristian never should have been removed from this country without the bargained-for protections afforded him under the Settlement Agreement,” Gallager wrote.
Cristian is one of several people that courts have found were deported by the Trump administration without due process or in violation of court orders. He was on the same set of March 15 deportation flights that included Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man sent to his home country despite a court order finding he was likely to be targeted for gang violence there.
Earlier this week, the administration acknowledged the “inadvertent” deportation of a transgender woman to Mexico, despite an immigration judge’s ruling earlier this year that she was likely to be tortured as a result of her identity.
Gallagher said that Cristian is in Venezuela and is not “in any government’s custody,” as far as the parties are aware. He has lost touch with his attorneys, and his current whereabouts are unknown.