BALTIMORE—A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to be prepared to provide answers in court on Monday after surprise testimony this week that more than 100 asylum seekers were deported in violation of a court-approved settlement agreement.
On Friday — Day 2 of what was supposed to be a one-day hearing but will now stretch to three days — U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher demanded that the Justice Department “get to the bottom” of what happened. She also raised for the first time concerns she has about government attorneys potentially not abiding by their duty of candor to the court.
Gallagher returned on her own without prompting from either party to yesterday’s explosive testimony, first reported by TPM, from an asylum officer for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that somewhere in the “low 100s” of asylum seekers protected from removal by the settlement agreement were deported anyway.
Saying she was “extremely concerned” and that it was news to the court that the number of wrongful removals could be in the triple digits, versus the less than a dozen previously known instances, Gallagher was particularly focused on the witness’ testimony that this information had been conveyed to lawyers for USCIS three to four weeks ago but that nothing had been raised with the court since then.
“I have concerns about the counsel’s duty of candor to the court,” she told the career DOJ lawyers in the courtroom.
In response, DOJ trial counsel for the first time publicly revealed that they had not known the substance of the explosive testimony before it came out in court.
“It was news to DOJ trial counsel, too,” DOJ lawyer Ruth Ann Mueller told Gallagher, while pointing out that over the course of the litigation the government’s legal team had notified opposing counsel in the class action lawsuit of other wrongful removals as they learned of them.
The government’s position in the case has been that to the extent there were deportations in violation of the settlement agreement (and a later court order), they were few in number. Before yesterday’s testimony, the number was thought to be between nine and 12 wrongful deportations. For comparison, the number of class members protected by the settlement agreement ranges from 70,000 to 75,000, according to testimony in the case.
Gallagher raised the possibility that government’s various lawyers weren’t all on the same page. “There may be a disconnect between DOJ counsel and agency counsel that is deeply concerning,” Gallagher said.
“We have been working with agency counsel to get to the bottom of this,” Mueller said in response, promising to report back Monday with answers.
The judge left open the possibility that there wasn’t as much to the revelation as the witness’ testimony suggested. “It’s possible agency counsel could have looked and decided there was no there there,” Gallagher said. “But we don’t know. We haven’t heard.”
The developments this week come in a case that first received national attention this time a year ago, when one of the class members named in court filings only as “Cristian” was deported under the Alien Enemies Act to CECOT in El Salvador. After Gallagher ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return, it slow-rolled its response.
“Cristian” was eventually sent on to Venezuela with the rest of the AEA detainees, and class counsel lost touch with him. In a ruling in November, Gallagher wrote:
It is possible, at this point, that Cristian has decided to forego a return to the United States and has voluntarily absented himself from contact with his counsel. It is equally possible that Cristian has been the victim of the anticipated violence that caused him to seek asylum in the United States in the first instance.
His whereabouts remain unknown.
The settlement agreement at issue was reached in 2024 under the Biden administration. At its core, it protects a subset of unaccompanied minors from deportation until their asylum applications are heard.
Most of the last two days of testimony has centered on rather tedious bureaucratic considerations like whether ICE’s case management system properly flags class members, whether deportation officers saw and abided by those alerts, and how USCIS updates ICE with the identities of class members who are not to be deported.
Gallagher was highly irritated yesterday by the government’s failure to abide by her order to produce witnesses who could testify based on their own personal knowledge of how the wrongful deportations occurred. The government provided a somewhat improved set of witnesses Friday, including an ICE unit chief whose testimony was completed yesterday but was brought back today and sworn in a second time to provide more complete information, which he had jotted down on the back of his business card because the place he stayed overnight didn’t have any paper.
But there were still gaps in the government’s case, and Gallagher ordered it to bring in additional witnesses when the hearing resumes Monday. But the main show Monday will be the question of the deportations in the “low 100s.” TPM, which has been the only outlet covering the hearing, will be back in court Monday.
As bad as everything has been described-then this!!!
No fucking way that a hotel in Baltimore didn’t have paper, or there wasn’t anywhere to by a pad a paper.
Then here in the electronic age, which I only have my toes in, what about his phone or iPad?
As do we all, sister. As do we all. It’s nice to see a government official speak of duty to candor. It gets right to the point.
What duty do you hold higher than your duty to God and the nation’s Constitution?
Thank you David.
Thank you David Kurtz.