The 10 Other Migrants Allegedly Wrongfully Deported by the Trump Administration

Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn’t the only one.

Now 53 days after a district court judge first ordered his return — and 47 days since the Supreme Court largely upheld the directive — alleged gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador, where he was deported by U.S. officials due to an “administrative error.”

As of April 21, Abrego Garcia is no longer being imprisoned at the Terrorist Confinement Center, the notorious facility known by its Spanish initials CECOT, but is instead being held at another Salvadoran prison.

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia and the Trump administration have been engaged in a lengthy discovery process, ordered by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to determine whether the administration has complied with her order to “facilitate” his return. But the process has hit several snags, as the administration has invoked state secrets privilege and other legal authorities to avoid offering information about Abrego Garcia.

“I’m like the cat with the ball of string and I’m trying to keep up with the ball of string,” Xinis said at a hearing earlier this month, referring to the administration’s repeated invocation of new rationales for why they cannot produce information she has asked for.

But as the same time as the attempts to return Abrego Garcia have hit a wall, the Trump administration has been accused by judges of wrongfully deporting migrants at least ten other migrants. These cases haven’t received nearly as much publicity, but — judging by Truth Social — they’ve already caught the president’s attention, and they could be the next major flashpoints in the ongoing, slow-boil dispute between the executive and judicial branches over due process.

Let’s break them down here so you have a jump on everyone else in understanding what’s going on:

A Guatemalan man sent to Mexico

Typically, when migrants are deported from the U.S., they are sent to their country of origin. That’s what happened in the Abrego Garcia case — although that was complicated for Abrego Garcia because his country of origin (El Salvador) also happened to be the one country that an immigration judge had ruled he couldn’t be deported to.

In a case like that, where a migrant can’t be deported to their home country — either because of a fear of persecution (as in the case of Abrego Garcia ) or because the country refuses to take them — the U.S. will then sometimes try to carry out a “third country” deportation, sending the migrant somewhere that isn’t their country of origin.

Shortly after Trump took office, the administration issued a directive seeking to jumpstart third-country deportations in cases where a migrant had a legal order protecting them from being deported to their home country. A group of migrants sued, arguing that the administration’s policy failed to comport with a U.S. law codifying the Convention Against Torture, which prohibits migrants from being deported to a country where it is “more likely than not” that they would be tortured by a government official. (Typically, migrants can apply to an immigration judge for protection under the treaty, and the judge decides if their case meets the threshold for protection.)

In April, Judge Brian Murphy — a Biden-appointed, Boston-based district court judge — ruled that migrants must be given “written notice” in a language they “can understand” of which third country they are going to be deported to, and a “meaningful opportunity” to argue to an immigration judge that they might be persecuted or tortured in that country.

Murphy has since ruled twice that the administration failed to follow the proper procedures in deporting migrants to a third country.

The first case concerns a man known in court filings by his initials O.C.G., a Guatemalan native who illegally entered the U.S. in 2024. After being arrested by Border Patrol, O.C.G. received a withholding of removal protecting him from being returned to Guatemala, because an immigration judge determined that he was “more likely than not” to face persecution or torture there. (Lawyers for O.C.G., who is gay, have said that he fled Guatemala after “facing multiple death threats on account of his sexuality.”)

During a February hearing, O.C.G. was also assured by the judge that he wouldn’t be deported to Mexico (where he was raped and held hostage while crossing through the country on his way to the U.S.). Two days later, according to O.C.G., he was indeed deported to Mexico without being given any opportunity to contest being sent there. Once he arrived in Mexico, O.C.G. said in a court filing:

They [which appears to refer to Mexican officials] told me I could apply for asylum in Mexico, but I would be kept locked up for the months it took to make a decision or I could just accept for them to take me back to Guatemala. After what had happened to me in Mexico I was too afraid to ask for asylum there. I had no safe options so I just told them to send me back to Guatemala so I would not be kept locked up.

O.C.G. wrote in a follow-up filing last week that he is now “living in hiding, in constant panic and constant fear” in a house in Guatemala owned by his sister, after seeing one of the people who had threatened him in the past on one of his first days back in Guatemala. “I can’t be gay here,” he wrote, “which means I cannot be myself.”

Not unlike the Abrego Garcia case — which also concerns a migrant who is now back in their home country, despite receiving legal protection from being sent there — the Trump administration has also admitted to making an error in the O.C.G. case.

In March, a Department of Homeland Security official told the court in a filing that O.C.G. was asked by authorities if he was “ afraid of being returned to Mexico” and “O.C.G. stated he was not afraid of returning to Mexico,” which is why he was deported there. But earlier this month, the administration informed the court that the declaration was an “error”: the administration could not “identify any officer who asked O.C.G. whether he had a fear of return to Mexico” or an officer to whom O.C.G. said that he did not fear return to Mexico.

Judge Murphy called this error “troubling,” adding: “The Court was given false information, upon which it relied, twice, to the detriment of a party at risk of serious and irreparable harm.” Last week, Murphy ordered the administration to “facilitate the return of O.C.G. to the United States.” (The judge pointedly added: “The Court notes that ‘facilitate’ in this context should carry less baggage than in several other notable cases. O.C.G. is not held by any foreign government.”)

The administration is required to submit a status report by tomorrow updating Murphy on the “status of O.C.G.’s return.”

Eight men sent to South Sudan

Meanwhile, Judge Murphy is also handling allegations that the administration violated his order on third-country removals by attempting to deport eight migrants — from countries including Vietnam, Cuba and Mexico — to South Sudan without the opportunity to challenge being sent there.

On May 19, according to a ruling by Murphy, the U.S. informed the eight individuals that they were being removed to South Africa, and then later that day, said they were being removed to South Sudan. They had “limited, if any, ability to communicate with family or legal representatives,” and thus, little chance to contest being sent to South Sudan.

Two days later, Murphy ruled that the administration’s actions violated his April order. By this point, the migrants were being kept at a facility in Djibouti, on their way to South Sudan. Murphy ordered the administration to give the migrants an opportunity to challenge their third-country removal to South Sudan, but said that those proceedings could take place either in the U.S. or in Djibouti.

President Trump has railed against that order in a Truth Social post, but Murphy pushed back — without naming Trump himself — in an order last night, noting that it was the administration’s own idea to hold the proceedings where the migrants were being held, and that he was trying to be charitable by not requiring the migrants be returned to the U.S.

“It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than Defendants anticipated,” Murphy wrote. “However, the Court never said that Defendants had to convert their foreign military base into an immigration facility; it only left that as an option, again, at Defendants’ request.”

Trump has argued that the migrants in this case are “EIGHT of the most violent criminals on Earth”; they have all been convicted of crimes, including murder, robbery, and sexual assault.

“To be clear, the Court recognizes that the class members at issue here have criminal histories,” Murphy wrote. “But that does not change due process.” His order last night rejected the administration’s request that he reconsider his order ensuring that the eight migrants receive an opportunity to challenge being deported to South Sudan.

“It continues to be this Court’s sincere hope that reason can get the better of rhetoric,” he wrote. “The orders put in place here are sensible and conservative.”

A Venezuelan man sent to El Salvador

The final alleged wrongful deportation concerns a Venezuelan man named Daniel Lozano-Camargo.

Like Abrego Garcia, he was sent by the Trump administration in March to the Salvadoran CECOT facility. Unlike Abrego Garcia, the administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to send him there, alleging that Lozano-Camargo was a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Also like Abrego Garcia, the U.S. has been accused of violating a legal order that protected Lozano-Camargo when they deported him. However, Lozano-Camargo’s protection was even broader than Abrego Garcia’s: while the latter man was only legally shielded from being sent to El Salvador, Lozano-Camargo was protected from being deported at all, at least until his asylum claim had been adjudicated, under a court-approved 2024 settlement that Lozano-Camargo (among other migrants who arrived in the U.S. as unaccompanied minors) was a party to.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher — a Maryland-based judge appointed by Trump during his first administration — ruled in April that Lozano-Camargo had been removed from the U.S. in violation of the settlement, and ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his “return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”

A panel of appeals court judges upheld Gallagher’s order; she has since ordered the administration to provide a status report by 5 p.m. today on the steps they have taken to facilitate Lozano-Camargo’s return.

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Big picture: Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn’t the only migrant the Trump administration stands accused of wrongfully deporting. The three other cases — concerning 10 migrants in total — are all set to come to a head in the coming days, as the administration owes judges a series of status reports on whether they are bringing about these migrants’ returns.

Those reports will offer a key test of whether the administration is complying with court orders. These cases could eventually reach the Supreme Court — but a majority of justices has consistently sided with lower court judges in ruling that the administration owes more due process to migrants than it has been giving them.