A federal judge appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump is not budging in his demand that the government “facilitate” a deported Venezuelan man’s return to the United States.

In the case, Daniel Lozano-Camargo, 20, was “wrongfully” deported to El Salvador in violation of a legal settlement agreement that was meant to keep him in the country while his pending asylum claim was litigated with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Notably, the plaintiff has filed his case under the pseudonym “Cristian,” but Politico reported his full identity on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the court itself, in line with a prior order binding the parties, is continuing to use the pseudonym.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, cited contract law principles in a 19-page opinion directing the government to try and get Lozano-Camargo back stateside “so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”

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On Monday, the government filed sealed arguments in an attempt to convince the judge to vacate her order. Along with those mysterious legal arguments, the government publicly filed a heavily redacted “Indicative Asylum Decision.”

The government’s public formal document explains why the Trump administration believes Lozano-Camargo’s underlying asylum claim will fail.

During a hearing on Tuesday, however, the judge said the asylum case is too far removed from the current legal dispute to be dispositive.

“I don’t think that this is a case about whether or not Cristian is going to eventually get asylum,” Gallagher said, according to a courtroom report by Politico. “Whether he ultimately receives asylum is not the issue. The issue is, and has always been, one of process.”

The issue, rather, is a 2024 settlement that limits how people who came to the country as unaccompanied minors can be deported, according to the judge. In Lozano-Camargo’s case, because he came to the U.S. when he was 17, that court-approved agreement means the government must wait until his asylum claim is extinguished.

“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 wrote. “In the case of Cristian, this requires putting him in the position ‘to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.’ In other words, under contract law principles, Cristian, and any other Class Member who has been removed in violation of the Settlement Agreement, must be returned to the United States to await adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by USCIS.”

An accompanying April 23 order explains, in relevant part:

Defendants are hereby ORDERED to facilitate Class Member Cristian’s return to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by USCIS under the terms of the Settlement Agreement. Facilitation includes, but is not limited to, a good faith request by Defendants to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States.

A federal judge in Colorado this week appeared skeptical of allowing the Trump administration to resume using an 18th-century wartime authority to fast-track the removal of Venezuelan migrants with limited notice and minimal, if any, due process.

U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney on Monday heard arguments from attorneys representing the Justice Department and immigration rights groups regarding whether she should renew a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the government from invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA) to deport migrants to a notorious work camp in El Salvador.

The hearing came after the U.S. Supreme Court in the early morning hours of Saturday issued an order — the first and only Saturday order issued this term — directing the government “not to remove” any immigrant detainees subject to President Donald Trump’s proclamation invoking the AEA in northern Texas.

The Saturday order follows the justices April 7 order in which they unanimously held that “AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal” under the AEA “within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”

In light of the high court’s ruling, an incredulous Sweeney questioned how the government could prevail in the instant case, asking the government’s attorney, “How could I not continue the temporary restraining order?” the Daily Camera reported.

Seeking to have the TRO lifted, the DOJ assured the court that any individuals subject to removal under the act would be given 24 hours to challenge their deportation before a judge, Denver CBS affiliate KCNC reported.

Attorneys from the ACLU and the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, the organizations representing the two unnamed petitioners in the case, pushed back on the administration’s position, asserting that affording migrants only one day to file individual habeas corpus petitions could not possibly comply with the Supreme Court’s directive requiring “reasonable time” for court challenges.

Attorneys representing several Venezuelan men being detained in Texas have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to once again weigh in on the Trump administration’s unprecedented use of an 18th-century wartime authority to fast-track deportations of accused gang members, claiming that the government has been flouting the court’s order to provide detainees with notice before they’re removed to a notorious work prison in El Salvador.

The high court in the early morning hours of Saturday issued an order — the first and only Saturday order issued this term — directing the government “not to remove” any immigrant detainees subject to President Donald Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA). The Saturday order came after the justices on April 7, unanimously held that “AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal” under the AEA “within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”

In Monday’s 15-page filing, the ACLU, which represents the detainees, asserted that the administration was not abiding by the court’s order. Instead, they allege the government has been shuffling groups of migrants between different judicial districts and providing them with “English-only AEA notices” less than a day before they are deported without “any explanation” as to how they may seek judicial review.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s weekend order that blocked the Trump administration from carrying out certain deportations under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) has been flamed by the Justice Department as an “unprecedented injunction” that is “fatally premature,” according to the DOJ, as the applicants have “improperly skipped over the lower courts before asking this one for relief,” it says.

“This Court is ‘a court of review, not first view,”” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer in the DOJ’s response to the Supreme Court order, which was handed down early Saturday morning.

“Yet the application insists on judicial review in reverse,” Sauer said. “It calls for this Court to be the first to resolve due-process challenges to the adequacy of notice that designated enemy aliens receive, on behalf of a putative class that no court below has certified, on a nonexistent record.”

Legal experts were quick to parse the U.S. Supreme Court’s “massively significant” order barring the Trump administration from carrying out deportations using the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).

In a highly unusual early Saturday morning ruling — the first and only Saturday order issued this term — the nation’s high court tersely ordered the government “not to remove” any immigrant detainees subject to deportation flights in the Northern District of Texas.

“[T]he Court didn’t wait at all,” Georgetown University Law Prof. Steve Vladeck wrote on his blog. “This may seem like a technical point, but it underscores how seriously the Court, or at least a majority of it, took the urgency of the matter.”

The law professor noted that the justices waited neither for an appellate court to rule on the issue nor gave the government a chance to respond to the emergency request before issuing the order.

Fed up with the government’s “gamesmanship” and “grandstanding” over the Kilmar Abrego Garcia deportation case, a federal judge in Maryland tore into the Trump administration on Tuesday afternoon following yet another nose-thumbing by the Justice Department in court filings — with DOJ lawyers and administration officials being blasted for not providing proper updates and blatantly ignoring judicial orders related to the deported dad’s situation.

“We’re going to do this by the federal rules of civil procedure,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis told Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Immigration Litigation Drew Ensign and the court Tuesday at a highly-anticipated hearing on Abrego Garcia’s deportation saga, according to Politico reporter Kyle Cheney, who was in attendance.

“No press release is going to move the court the same way that sworn, under oath testimony from persons with knowledge,” Xinis said. “If you have objections, you’re going to have to make them consistent with the rules.”

A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the “unlawful termination of humanitarian parole processes” by the Trump administration for more than a half-million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who have been allowed to enter the United States and work under an umbrella of deportation protections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said in her order Monday that she was siding with immigrants from the four countries — who filed a lawsuit in late February and were seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO) with the groups Justice Action Center and Human Rights First — on account of President Donald Trump’s attempt to revoke “previously granted parole and work authorizations” for individuals currently living in the United States without a “case-by-case review,” which she said was an “unlawful action.”

“Plaintiffs were paroled into the United States by complying with the immigration processes made available to them,” wrote Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee, in a 41-page order filed in Boston.

“As lawful parolees, they did not have to fear arrest for being in the United States, were permitted to legally work if they received work authorization, and could apply for adjustment of status or other benefits while paroled into this country,” Talwani explained. “The immediate impact of the shortening of their grant of parole is to cause their lawful status in the United States to lapse early — in less than two weeks,” the judge said.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador by the U.S. government last month, is “alive and secure” at a notorious work prison there, the State Department insists — but his “future is up to” the Central American country, according to President Donald Trump.

The facility, known as the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), has been described as a “black hole of human rights” and “steel pit” where terrorists, murderers and “psychopaths” are reportedly held, according to the BBC.

Trump said on Saturday night that it was ultimately up to President Nayib Bukele, of El Salvador, to decide what to do with “barbarians” like Abrego Garcia, who were deported under an 18th-century wartime authority last month and placed in CECOT custody — Abrego Garcia mistakenly, despite the fact that he had legal permission to live in the U.S. as a protected resident of Maryland, with his wife and child both being U.S. citizens.

When the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday vacated a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting President Donald Trump from deporting Venezuelan migrants under an 18th century wartime authority, the ruling indicated the case would be adjudicated in Texas, where appeals are overseen by the most conservative federal circuit in the nation. However, a federal judge in New York on Wednesday issued a separate TRO one day after attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a class-action lawsuit in challenging the administration’s fast-tracked deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA) on behalf of two Venezuelan nationals currently being detained in the state.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein granted the petitioners’ request to halt deportations of Venezuelan migrants under the AEA, according to a courtroom report from MSNBC legal contributor Adam Klasfeld. The TRO is not nationwide, reportedly only covering individuals currently detained in the Southern District of New York.

The two unnamed migrants, ages 21 and 32, filed the 21-page lawsuit seeking the emergency ordering preventing the federal government from moving the plaintiffs out of the jurisdiction and from deporting any similarly situated migrants under the AEA.

According to the complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s vacating the TRO, the administration “is resuming its summary removals of Venezuelans who are in ongoing immigration proceedings, including Petitioners here, without any judicial review — including by this Court.”

“Respondents seek to move Petitioners in secret, without due process, to a prison in El Salvador known for dire conditions, torture, and other forms of physical abuse — possibly for life,” the complaint states.

The judge scheduled a hearing in the matter for Wednesday.

Trump on March 15, 2025, became the first president since World War II to invoke the AEA, which authorizes him to summarily remove “natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects” of a “hostile nation or government” when there is “declared war” against it or when it has “perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States” an “invasion or predatory incursion.” In a controversial and novel use of the power, Trump declared the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) had committed or attempted an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” such that any member of the group was summarily removable under the Act.

The administration asserted that the gang constituted a “hybrid criminal state” for purposes of invoking the AEA.