A judge told the Trump administration on Tuesday that she is standing behind an order she gave last month requiring the government to take steps to retrieve a second man from a prison in El Salvador after deporting him there under the Alien Enemies Act.
Judge Stephanie Gallagher of Maryland said she would pause the order for two days to give the Justice Department time to appeal it, but after that, she would set a deadline for the government to comply with her demand.
The case mirrors that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose removal has become a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s aggressive and fast-moving plans for deporting illegal immigrants.
The government admitted to mistakenly deporting Abrego Garcia to the Salvadoran prison, known as CECOT. But it has since been fighting with Paula Xinis, another Maryland-based judge, over her and the Supreme Court’s order to “facilitate” his return.
At issue in the new case is the deportation of Daniel Lozano Camargo, a 20-year-old Venezuelan national who admitted to entering the country illegally.
Lozano Camargo, known only as “Cristian” in court filings until Politico located his name in a document’s metadata on Monday, was convicted in January of felony cocaine possession and taken into ICE custody.
His subsequent removal in March was based on ICE’s determination that he was subject to the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used wartime law Trump invoked that month as a means of bypassing other immigration laws to deport alleged Tren de Aragua gang members quickly. Both Lozano Camargo and Abrego Garcia were removed on a controversial set of flights on March 15, though Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran national whom the Trump administration alleged was in the MS-13 gang and deported under a different authority.
Gallagher found that Lozano Camargo’s deportation violated a settlement agreement. The Venezuelan national was part of a class of migrants covered by the agreement, which the district court authorized in November 2024. The agreement protected anyone in the class who had final orders of removal from being deported until their asylum claims were fully vetted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
“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,” the judge wrote in her order, which she issued last month.
DOJ attorneys argued Monday that Gallagher should vacate the order because the USCIS would deny Lozano Camargo’s asylum claim and deport him anyway on the grounds that he is an alleged Tren de Aragua member.
A DOJ spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about whether it would appeal Gallagher’s order.
Gallagher acknowledged the Supreme Court’s order last month regarding Abrego Garcia that lower courts must show “deference” to the executive branch’s purview over foreign affairs. The Trump administration has maintained that it has no control over how El Salvador manages its prisoners and that ordering the president to negotiate with another country interferes with his authority over foreign relations.
Still, Gallagher said she also “fully agrees” with Xinis’s interpretation of the part of the Supreme Court’s order that directed the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.
Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, had said the word “facilitate” implies that the government has an obligation to take proactive steps to retrieve Abrego Garcia. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Xinis’s view, calling it an “active verb.” Gallagher, an Obama appointee whom Trump renominated when he took office in 2017, made a similar finding.
JUDGE RESUMES ABREGO GARCIA CASE AFTER WEEKLONG HIATUS
“Standing by and taking no action is not facilitation,” Gallagher said.
The judge said facilitating Lozano Camargo’s return “includes, but is not limited to, Defendants making 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.”