A federal judge tonight ordered the United States to take immediate steps to facilitate the return of a migrant identified by the initials of O.C.G., back to the United States.
O.C.G., his attorneys say, was in the country illegally, but was granted a withholding of removal from Guatemala from an immigration judge. Two days later, he was placed on a bus and sent to Mexico without any notice. But Mexico, his attorneys say, is a country where he was previously held for ransom and raped.
“O.C.G. had said during his immigration proceedings that he was afraid of being sent to Mexico, and even presented evidence of the violence he had experienced there,” Judge Brian Murphy of the District of Massachusetts writes. “But the immigration judge told O.C.G.— consistent with this Court’s understanding of the law—that he could not be removed to a country other than his native Guatemala.”
Soon after being sent to Mexico, the Mexican Government sent him back to his native Guatemala, where he remains today, in hiding.
“No one has ever suggested that O.C.G. poses any sort of security threat,” Murphy writes. “In general, this case presents no special facts or legal circumstances, only the banal horror of a man being wrongfully loaded onto a bus and sent back to a country where he was allegedly just raped and kidnapped.”
“The Court has no reason to doubt the immigration judge’s finding that O.C.G. is more likely than not to be persecuted if he stays in Guatemala,” Murphy wrote. He wants the immigrations proceedings for O.C.G. redone, essentially — back in the United States.
The court has asked for a status report within five days, as to the status of O.C.G.’s return to the US.