Demonstrators gather to protest against the deportation of immigrants to El Salvador outside the Permanent Mission of El Salvador to the United Nations on April 24, 2025, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
She also stressed that, despite the procedural changes before the court, it does not mean they are "abandoning ship" in efforts to secure Cristian's return to the U.S., though she acknowledged the situation on the ground had shifted significantly.
Gallagher, a Trump appointee, had ruled in April that Cristian's deportation violated a settlement agreement that the Department of Homeland Security struck last year with a group of young asylum seekers. Under the 2024 deal, DHS agreed not to deport members of that class until their asylum claims could be fully adjudicated by a U.S. court.
The hearing sharply underscored the fast-changing fact pattern underpinning Cristian's custodial status. Days earlier, Cristian was deported from CECOT, in El Salvador, to his home country of Venezuela.
Gallagher said Tuesday that the new situation has put the court "in a different posture" compared to its position just one week ago.
Lawyers for Cristian argued the move, which they had no prior notice of, should be grounds to move on holding the Trump administration in criminal contempt. The judge, for her part, did not rule it out.
In Gallagher's ruling four months ago, she determined that Cristian's removal was a "breach of contract" due to the settlement terms of the 2024 DHS deal. She then ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S.
But as Tuesday's hearing made clear, Daniel Lozano-Camargo, or the migrant referred to in court documents as "Cristian," is not on his way to the U.S. from CECOT.
In fact, Justice Department lawyers confirmed Tuesday that he was deported from CECOT back to his home country of Venezuela on Friday along with 251 other Venezuelan migrants, whom the Trump administration deported from the U.S. to El Salvador in March under the auspices of a wartime immigration law used just three times previously in U.S. history.
Their return to Venezuela was part of a prisoner swap made in order to secure the release of 10 Americans detained in that country, and was confirmed later Friday by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
It has also raised profound concerns about the status of the hundreds of Venezuelan migrants sent from CECOT to their country of origin. Little is known about the individuals deported to CECOT earlier this year, and it is unclear if, or how many, migrants in question had been given "withholding of removal" orders from the U.S. blocking their return to Venezuela.
Cristian's lawyer, Kevin DeJong, on Tuesday upbraided the Trump administration for its "blatant disregard" for Gallagher's order, and described his inclusion in the prisoner swap as an "egregious violation" of the April order.
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The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, another migrant erroneously deported to El Salvador, bears similarities to Cristian's case. (Fox News)
The case bears many similarities to the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian migrant wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March and ordered by a federal judge to be returned to the U.S.
Like Abrego Garcia, Cristian remained in El Salvador for months, despite a court order demanding his return, and requiring the administration to file regular updates to his status in order to determine compliance with the order.
But Tuesday's motions hearing – and the blitz of court filings submitted to Gallagher in recent days – underscored the very different situation that has played out instead.
"Cristian was a pawn in this plan," DeJohg said on Tuesday, noting that the government took "active purposeful steps to deport him" despite the court order, and with apparent prior knowledge.
"They could have included him" on the flight back to the U.S. with Abrego Garcia, he argued.
Instead, DeJong said, the "only reasonable inference we see is that the government attorneys willfully disregarded" the court.
Gallagher in May declined to grant the Trump administration's request for her to lift her order requiring them to return Cristian. She stressed that her order has nothing to do with the strength of his asylum request, in a nod to two apparent low-level drug offenses and a conviction as recently as January.
Rather, she said, it is about allowing him the process under the law, and under the settlement struck with DHS.
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She said then that it is not a case of whether Lozano-Camargo will eventually receive asylum – it’s a question of process.
The DHS settlement agreement "requires him to be here and have his hearing," she said then.
Breanne Deppisch is a national politics reporter for Fox News Digital covering the Trump administration, with a focus on the Justice Department, FBI, and other national news.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-appointed-judge-blasts-tk-doj-immigration-court-fights-enter-new-phase