Federal immigration officers last month flew an Oregon asylum seeker back to his home country of Guatemala after a judge cleared the way for his deportation, but they refused to let him off once the plane touched down.
They had realized mid-flight that they made a mistake.
So, as the 25-year-old Woodburn man remained shackled and handcuffed, they flew him back on the same plane to the U.S.
The on-again/off-again deportation illustrates the continuing confusion and upheaval caused by the Trump administration’s attempt at wide-scale immigration enforcement.
The man — identified only as LJPL in court records — has spent more than two months in immigration detention since his arrest in August when officers stopped a van in Hubbard as it took him and six other fieldworkers to a farm to harvest blueberries.
He has been held in immigration detention centers in Tacoma, Arizona, Texas and now is back in Tacoma at the Northwest ICE Processing Center. Once he was returned to Tacoma, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials offered him $1,000 if he voluntarily left the country but he refused, court records show.
This week, LJPL’s attorney asked U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut to reverse her Aug. 22 ruling that the ICE detention of LJPL was legal and instead order his release based on the aborted deportation.
Immergut repeatedly asked the government’s attorney during a hearing Thursday to explain why immigration officials had flown LJPL back to the U.S.
The judge noted that his return flight appears to be a “concession” by ICE that LJPL still had an unresolved proceeding in immigration court that prevented his deportation.
“Why was he returned?” Immergut asked several times.
At one point, U.S. Justice Department attorney Ariana N. Garousi simply remained silent.
Immergut said she understood that it’s a complex system but later asked the same question again.
Garousi finally acknowledged that ICE officials “made a mistake.”
LJPL’s attorney, Tess Hellgren, urged the judge to release LJPL.
“There are many ways they can seek to detain a noncitizen, but here they have not done that correctly,” she said.
Immergut ordered immigration officials not to deport LJPL or move him from Tacoma as she considers the request.
She said she expects to issue a ruling by early next week, noting that she’s “been busy with some other matters.” (Immergut a week ago put a temporary hold on President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Portland.)
The judge also said she was concerned that ICE officials allegedly refused to allow LJPL’s attorney to be present when he was interviewed about whether he feared returning to Guatemala where his brother had been killed.
His case follows other questionable enforcement in Oregon.
Federal agents mistakenly detained a U.S. citizen earlier this month in Portland, arrested a man awaiting green card approval as he was dropping off his child at a Beaverton day care in July, arrested a handful of asylum seekers in June outside or near Portland Immigration Court though they followed the right process and targeted nearly two dozen international students across the state in April who were studying in the country with valid visas, according to court records and immigration lawyers.
Also in June, federal agents detained four U.S. citizen children from Portland, their mother who has a pending crime victims visa and their grandmother who was visiting from Honduras with a valid travel visa.
‘This nightmare’
LJPL had been ordered removed from the U.S. twice before in 2009 and 2014, according to the government.
He then came back to the U.S. with his then-6-year-old daughter on Feb. 14, 2024, entering near Nogales, Arizona.
Despite the earlier removal orders, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials released him on his own recognizance, with instructions to report to ICE’s Eugene field office on various dates.
He later received a notice to appear in Immigration Court in November 2026 for a deportation proceeding. In the meantime, he did as instructed to check in regularly with immigration officials in Eugene, provided his Woodburn address and applied for asylum this past February, according to the court record.
LJPL came to the U.S. because he believed those responsible for killing his brother would harm his family and him, his lawyers said.
Then on Aug. 7, ICE agents stopped the transport van, smashed the driver’s window and dragged LJPL out of a passenger seat even though the officers were looking for someone else, said Hellgren, director of legal advocacy at Innovation Law Lab in Portland.
He was among four people arrested that morning after he was asked if he had an immigration case pending. ICE agents took him into custody and drove him to their Tacoma detention center.
On Aug. 22, Immergut denied a petition for his release, finding his detention mandatory and lawful.
He remained held in Tacoma as U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials moved to dismiss his pending case in Immigration Court. But in early September, an immigration judge rejected the motion because the federal government had failed to sever LJPL’s case from that of his daughter.
Two days later, an asylum officer talked to LJPL by phone to determine whether he had a “reasonable fear” of persecution or torture to challenge his deportation.
But the asylum officer denied LJPL access to his immigration attorney and denied an interpreter in his native indigenous language, Mam, according to his sworn declaration to the court.
LJPL then told the officer that he didn’t want to proceed with the interview and would return to Guatemala because he found his detention unbearable, he said in the declaration.
“I was afraid still to return to Guatemala,” he said, “but I could not stand being imprisoned for an uncertain amount of time.”
He was flown in mid-September to Florence, Arizona, and then to El Paso, Texas, where he spent two nights sleeping on the floor of a holding area. Two days later, on Sept. 15, he was placed on a plane in handcuffs tied to a waist chain and shackles.
He was told that he was going to Guatemala through El Salvador. But once the plane touched down in Guatemala, he said he wasn’t allowed to get off.
“I did not understand what was going on or why they were returning. … I just wanted this nightmare to be over,” he said in his statement.
On the trip back, he said he felt nauseous and felt pressure in his chest. He called for help and a nurse on the plane gave him some water.
His next stop was ICE Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in El Paso. He remained there for 10 days and then transferred back to Tacoma on Sept. 25.
Once he arrived in Washington state, he asked an ICE officer why he was brought back. He said he was told it was because he still has “to see a judge.”
“All I want is to be free again,” he said in his declaration. “I want to be with my partner and my daughter. I am not a criminal. I have never hurt anyone, so I do not understand why all this is happening to me.”
Highly unusual circumstance?
Immergut previously ruled that Homeland Security had discretion to reinstate the 2009 and 2014 deportation orders. Once immigration officials did so, then detention was mandatory, she ruled.
But LJPL’s lawyers have argued from the beginning that immigration officials couldn’t deport him because he still had an active case in Immigration Court.
The ICE officials apparently came to the same realization once they were on their way with LJPL to Guatemala.
Immergut said ICE’s handling of LJPL “does complicate things in potentially a very significant way” and agreed to reconsider her prior ruling on LJPL’s detention.
Federal immigration law says an active immigration case trumps previous removal orders, LJPL’s lawyers argued.
The law says that once a so-called “removal proceeding” begins in Immigration Court to decide if someone can remain in the country, that “shall be” the “sole and exclusive procedure” for deciding whether to deport the person. That path affords an appeal process.
LJPL’s lawyers also said the law allows a parent or guardian to appear with a minor in Immigration Court. That means, they argued, that LJPL needs to be in the U.S. to do that for his now 7-year-old daughter. Otherwise, his daughter’s case, which is consolidated with his, would fall into limbo, they said.
Garousi, the federal attorney, argued in a written response that the judge shouldn’t reconsider her prior ruling allowing LJPL’s detention “absent highly unusual circumstances.”
“The underlying facts remain true,” she wrote. The government simply reinstated a prior order to remove LJPL, she wrote.
In court, Immergut pressed Garousi, saying, “I don’t really understand what you’re saying. Why did they bring him back? To do what?”
In court, Garousi couldn’t effectively explain why ICE officials had flown LJPL back to the U.S. Finally, she told the judge that said she wasn’t prepared to answer the question.
Nowhere in the government’s written responses did Garousi or ICE Officer Christopher Sica, a supervisory detention and deportation officer in Tacoma, mention LJPL’s aborted deportation.
Sica described how LJPL had been moved from Tacoma to Texas and back to Tacoma, but somehow left out that the federal government flew him to El Salvador and then Guatemala and back.
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