A 19-year-old asylum seeker was removed to El Salvador despite three separate court orders protecting him. Judge Stephanie Gallagher has now ordered the government to bring him back.
A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump has held the Trump administration in contempt after immigration officials deported a 19-year-old asylum seeker to El Salvador despite three separate court orders protecting him from removal. The same man had already been removed once before, making this the rare legal story where the phrase “wrongfully deported twice” is not a typo but the actual chronology.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher issued the contempt ruling Friday and ordered the government to return the man, identified in court filings as E.L.A., to the United States. She also ordered officials to return his property and documents and to block any further removal until his asylum case is handled under the terms of the court-approved settlement.
The dispute dates back years. E.L.A. is part of a class-action case involving young asylum seekers who challenged a federal policy that restricted their ability to pursue asylum claims while they were already in removal proceedings. Court orders issued in November 2024, April 2025 and July 2026 were supposed to protect people in that class from being removed before the required asylum process was completed.
According to court filings reported by Axios, the government acknowledged that E.L.A. was nevertheless deported to El Salvador. In a September filing, officials said they learned of the removal after receiving an email from class counsel and were considering steps to correct what they called “communication errors” that led to the deportation.
That explanation did not satisfy Gallagher. Her order found the government in contempt and required concrete steps to undo the removal. The case is especially striking because Gallagher was appointed to the federal bench by Trump during his first term, which turns the usual political shorthand on its head. This is not a judge appointed by a Democratic president sparring with a Republican administration. It is a Trump appointee telling the Trump administration that it violated the court’s orders.
The administration has clashed repeatedly with federal judges over immigration enforcement during Trump’s second term, particularly in cases involving expedited removals, third-country deportations and asylum restrictions. Supporters of the administration argue that aggressive enforcement is necessary to carry out immigration law efficiently. Critics argue that speed has repeatedly overtaken due process, with people removed before courts can meaningfully review what happened.
This case is unusually concrete because the court had already spoken multiple times. The legal issue is not whether the judge likes the administration’s immigration policy. The issue is whether executive-branch officials complied with orders they were legally required to follow. A contempt finding is the judiciary’s way of saying the answer was no.
There is also an important distinction between a policy disagreement and a compliance failure. Presidents are allowed to challenge court rulings through appeals. Agencies can ask judges to reconsider orders. Lawyers can argue that a court misunderstood the law. What the government cannot ordinarily do is treat an order like a suggestion and sort out the consequences afterward.
Gallagher has now ordered the parties to update the court on whether E.L.A. wants to return to the United States and, if he does, how the government plans to bring him back. That is a remarkable logistical endpoint for a case that began with a basic promise: do not deport this person until the court says the process is complete.
The administration may argue that bureaucratic breakdowns rather than intentional defiance caused the removal. That matters when courts decide what remedies or sanctions are appropriate. But from the perspective of the person who was put on the plane, the distinction between deliberate violation and catastrophic administrative error may feel somewhat academic.
The broader issue is institutional. Federal judges do not control immigration policy, but they do control cases before them. Executive agencies do not have to agree with every ruling, but they do have to obey orders unless those orders are stayed or reversed. That balance is one of the less glamorous parts of constitutional government, right up until somebody gets deported twice.
So the question is not whether the administration should have broad power to enforce immigration law. It is what should happen when that power collides with a court order that says, very specifically, not yet.
