Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Photo: Diego Radzinschi/ALM

U.S. immigration officials are reviewing the “confusion” that led to the “unauthorized” deportation of a mother and her daughter to El Salvador last week as their lawyers fought in Washington to freeze any removals pending the outcome of their court challenge.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia on Aug. 9 lambasted the government for allowing the woman, identified in court papers by the pseudonym Carmen, to be removed despite government lawyers' contrary representations in court. Sullivan said the government “spirited away” the mother and her daughter, and he ordered the U.S. to “turn that plane around.” The judge called the government conduct “outrageous.”

The Justice Department, responding to a court order, on Monday filed a report detailing the events that led up to the removal of Carmen and her daughter, and the scramble to get the family back to the United States. The government said Carmen and her daughter never got off the plane in El Salvador. The family is now in U.S. custody at a family center in Texas.

Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni, a senior immigration lawyer, said federal immigration officials are reviewing “removal procedures in the San Antonio Field Office to identify gaps in oversight of the removal process.” Reuveni also reported that “protocols have been updated to reflect that transfer and/or removal of any alien with a stay of removal, hold on removal, or any other management-directed impediment to removal will require” further supervisory approvals.

A U.S. deportation officer, according to the court filing Monday, “appears to have gone through normal procedures, overlooked the impediment to removal at issue here because it was not in the system to be seen, and continued with removal procedures without verifying the information with a supervisor.”

Justice Department lawyers had previously told the court that the government would not remove any of the plaintiffs in the case, including Carmen and her daughter, before 11:59 p.m. Aug. 10. Sullivan learned at a court hearing Aug. 9 that the girl and her mother had been removed, despite representations to the contrary.

According to Reuveni's report, the DOJ itself only learned of Carmen's deportation during a break in the hearing. Lawyers caught wind of her possible removal from counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been representing Carmen and her daughter.

“Until that time, no one at ICE or DHS had informed undersigned counsel or any DOJ counsel under my supervision of any actions taken on the ground in San Antonio inconsistent with undersigned counsel's representation to this court, nor of any plans to execute plaintiffs' expedited removal orders,” Reuveni wrote.

Sullivan threatened to initiate contempt proceedings against U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other officials for any noncompliance with his directive to return Carmen and her daughter.

In a declaration to the court, Carmen said her removal from the country occurred the morning of Aug. 9, after officials at her immigration detention center in Texas “unexpectedly” awoke her. Hours later, Carmen and her daughter were “hurried” onto a San Antonio plane, she said.

“While we were in the air, no one told me anything about what was happening. It was not until we landed in my home country that an official asked me my name and whether I was appealing my case. I said my name, and told him that I was appealing my case,” Carmen said in the court filing. “The official told me that his boss had told him that I was going to be returned to the U.S.”

The developments are part of the ACLU's legal challenge to the Trump administration's new asylum policy, which no longer accepts fear of gang violence or domestic abuse as a basis for receiving asylum in the U.S. The ACLU in Washington's federal trial court sued the government last week, representing about a dozen women and children, including Carmen and her daughter, in the case.

 

The Justice Department's report Monday to the court is posted below:

 

 

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