The case, involving a 20-year-old Venezuelan, exemplifies yet another way the White House has sought new and aggressive methods to expel immigrants from the United States.
For much of the past two months, the White House has assumed a defiant stance toward a series of court orders — including one from the Supreme Court — to take steps to secure the freedom of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador in March.
But the administration is also fighting a separate court order in another case in which officials have been told to seek the release of a different, and lesser-known, immigrant who was expelled to El Salvador on the same set of flights as Mr. Abrego Garcia.
That man, a 20-year-old Venezuelan identified in court papers as Cristian, was flown to El Salvador on March 15 with scores of other immigrants. He was among nearly 140 Venezuelans deported without hearings after Trump officials accused them of being members of the Tren de Aragua street gang and deemed them subject to President Trump’s proclamation invoking an 18th-century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act.
Mr. Abrego Garcia, who is a Salvadoran citizen, was deported on one of those flights even though an earlier court order expressly prohibited him from being sent back to his homeland. Something similar happened to Cristian: He was expelled from the United States despite a ruling that his removal violated a previous court settlement intended to protect young migrants with pending asylum cases.
Last month, Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher, echoing the judge in Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case, ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Cristian’s return by asking the Salvadoran government to send him back to U.S. soil. But on Tuesday, Judge Gallagher agreed to put her own order on hold until Thursday to give the Justice Department time to appeal it.
The two cases, both of which are playing out in Federal District Court in Maryland, exemplify the way in which the White House has sought new and aggressive methods to expel immigrants from the United States. The cases also reflect the increasingly recalcitrant attitude that the administration has adopted toward judicial orders — especially in deportation cases.