A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a second man must be returned from the El Salvador megaprison where he was hastily deported by President Donald Trump’s administration in March.
The man, referred to in court documents by the pseudonym Cristian, was among those swept up by immigration officials and flown to a brutal facility where inmates are told they will never leave. Cristian, age 20, is a native of Venezuela.
The Trump administration has already been ordered to “facilitate” the return of another man who was on the flights, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, although he has remained in El Salvador while the administration fights to keep him there.
In Cristian’s case, Trump-appointed Judge Stephanie Gallagher nodded to Abrego Garcia and said “this Court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States.”
Her order came in response to an emergency motion made in a class-action suit originally filed back in 2019 against the Department of Homeland Security, which included Cristian among its plaintiffs. The parties reached a settlement in 2024 stipulating that they could remain in the country while their individual asylum claims were processed in the courts. All had been brought into the country as children.
Gallagher wrote that facilitating Cristian’s return “includes, but is not limited to, ... a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by USCIS,” or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
She further ordered the administration not to remove any other individuals covered under the settlement agreement.
Gallagher noted, however, that all parties involved viewed the challenge to Cristian’s removal as a breach of contract, rather than a challenge to Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport immigrants he views as dangerous.
The Justice Department is likely to fight the order. Cristian had been convicted in Texas on a drug possession charge in January and swiftly transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he might have remained while his asylum claim was processed. He was instead flown out of the country on March 15 as the Trump administration branded him a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The president’s controversial use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 involved claiming that Tren de Aragua gang members are functionally at war with the United States and can be removed as “alien enemies.”
Trump and administration officials have already been issuing taunting messages in defiance of the orders surrounding Abrego Garcia, saying that he will “never” come back to the United States. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Vice President JD Vance and others have misleadingly claimed Abrego Garcia to be a member of a gang — although they say he is part of MS-13, not Tren de Aragua.
Abrego Garcia had been protected from deportation to his nation of origin, El Salvador, by a 2019 court order that determined he could face persecution by the gangs there.
By continuing to defy the courts, the Trump administration is teeing up a constitutional crisis that pits executive powers against those allocated to the judiciary.
Last weekend, the Supreme Court made the unusual move of issuing a late-night order barring the Trump administration from conducting any more deportations under the Alien Enemies Act — for now.