A federal judge in Maryland has held the Trump administration in contempt of court, ruling that immigration officials repeatedly violated three separate orders when they deported a young asylum seeker to El Salvador.
The case traces back to November 2024, when a group of immigrants was granted protection from deportation while U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services worked through their pending asylum claims. That arrangement was formalized in an order from the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
Not long after, in early 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ignored that injunction and put several men aboard a flight carrying roughly 250 deportees bound for El Salvador’s CECOT prison, a facility notorious for holding suspected gang members and terrorism suspects.
The litigation surrounding that class action has since ballooned, generating hundreds of docket entries tied to various habeas corpus petitions filed under the original protective order. Violations of that order, along with follow-up orders from U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump first-term appointee, have piled up in the months since.
The docket now runs 715 entries deep. The most recent centers on a petitioner identified only by his initials, ELA, a designation used, according to a court filing from early September, to protect his identity given that he’s “a young person seeking asylum who is now in the country from which he sought asylum.”
According to a brief filed by ELA’s attorneys in support of a motion to enforce the settlement, immigration authorities put him on a deportation flight to El Salvador twice within a six-month span, the very country where he says he fears being persecuted, each time in defiance of the settlement and the court’s orders.
The underlying contempt motion lays out the timeline in stark terms: ELA was first removed in March 2026 despite the settlement agreement and existing court orders. Class counsel’s advocacy got him brought back to the U.S. in August 2026, only for the government to deport him again on September 1, 2026. Because of that pattern, his attorneys asked the court to hold the government in civil contempt of its November 25, 2024, April 23, 2025, and July 29, 2026 orders.
Judge Gallagher sided with the petitioner’s legal team, issuing a brief two-page order alongside a sealed memorandum opinion.
“Defendants are hereby found to be in contempt of this Court’s November 25, 2024, April 23, 2025, and July 29, 2026, orders as a result of their removal of E.L.A. to El Salvador in violation of this Court’s orders,” Gallagher wrote.
The court’s full reasoning remains sealed, but the September brief offers a glimpse into what may have driven the ruling. Attorneys for ELA wrote that the government never provided any legal justification for his detention, whether to the court, to class counsel, or to immigration counsel, and never responded to that effect in his habeas petition. Nor, they said, could the government point to any pending removal proceedings or an unexecuted final removal order.
Instead, the filing explains, ELA had been granted special protections as a minor at the time of his first deportation. He was later given humanitarian parole, still valid for another ten months, before being deported a second time.
“And, ELA has made clear that he intends to pursue an asylum adjudication on the merits and will attend the asylum interview,” the motion states. “Had this not been his intention, he would have not returned to the United States.”
Beyond the repeated deportations that defied his legal protections and the court’s orders, the motion alleges that officials seized his belongings, put him on a plane by force, and left him in El Salvador without money, a phone, or even a change of clothes, still dressed in a detention jumpsuit.
In response, the court directed the administration to bring ELA back to the United States and to hold off on enforcing any final removal order against him until USCIS issues a final decision on a properly filed asylum application under the settlement’s terms, or until the settlement itself expires.
Gallagher also ordered the government to return all of ELA’s belongings and documents that were taken from him at the time of what the court called his wrongful removal.
