Venezuelan deported to El Salvador and back to home country had a court order for his return to the US

Daniel Lozano-Camargo fled Venezuela as a minor. He illegally crossed the southern border of the United States alone at the age of 17 in 2022. He was held in a juvenile detention center until he reached the age of majority, and upon his release, he filed an asylum application. The young man was protected from deportation while that claim remained open, but last March, he was nevertheless deported to El Salvador by the Donald Trump administration. A federal court ordered his return to U.S. soil in April, finding that he had been wrongfully removed, but Lozano-Camargo remained imprisoned in the Central American country until last week, when he was returned to his home country — the same country he escaped from as a child — under a prisoner exchange deal between the United States, Venezuela, and El Salvador. His asylum application remains open.

Lozano-Camargo returned to Caracas on July 18 with a group of more than 200 Venezuelans whom Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele handed over to Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro in exchange for U.S. prisoners held in Venezuela and political prisoners from the South American country. The men spent four months incarcerated in an infamous Salvadoran mega-jail after being deported by the United States in mid-March, accused of belonging to the transnational gang Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated as a terrorist organization.

Following the exchange, the defense team for Lozano-Camargo — identified only as “Cristian” in court documents and proceedings — doesn’t know where he is or how to contact him, his lawyers said during a court hearing Tuesday. “They sent him back to the one country he’s actually seeking asylum from,” without providing any notice to his legal team until after the fact, attorney Kevin DeJong told the court. “Cristian was a pawn in this plan, I don’t know how else to say it,” he said. “He was a pawn in this prisoner exchange deal.”

Maryland U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher ordered the Trump Administration to facilitate Lozano-Camargo’s return in late April, citing the high-profile case of the Salvadoran man Kilmar Abrego García, who was also deported to El Salvador despite a court order prohibiting that move. In Lozano-Camargo’s case, the judge ruled, the Venezuelan was removed from the country in violation of a legal agreement she had approved in 2024, which prevented immigration authorities from expelling him while his asylum application was pending adjudication. The Biden administration reached this resolution in November of last year to resolve a 2019 class-action lawsuit filed by a group of migrants who entered the country as unaccompanied minors seeking asylum.

The Trump administration, however, refused to comply with the judge’s order, arguing that his return was unnecessary, since even if the immigrant were returned to the United States and his asylum application were pursued, it would be denied because the young man allegedly belongs to a “violent terrorist group.” The Republican administration invoked a 1798 wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, which allows for the expedited expulsion of foreigners considered a threat to national security, to deport the 252 Venezuelans. However, it never provided definitive evidence to prove his ties to the Tren de Aragua. Lozano-Camargo’s defense and family maintain that the young man has never had anything to do with the criminal group.

Judge Gallagher asked government lawyers on Tuesday to assist the defense in contacting the young man. But Justice Department attorney Ruth Ann Mueller could not even confirm where in Venezuela he ended up after the exchange. “This is a fast-evolving situation,” she said. At the same time, she argued that the case should be dismissed, as the matter is now moot given that Lozano-Camargo was released. She added that facilitating his return “looks very different now that he’s in Venezuela.”

However, the judge indicated that recent events do not mean the court will abandon its efforts to secure the young man’s return to the United States. Gallagher has always argued that this is not a case about whether Lozano-Camargo will be granted asylum; “the issue is, and always has been, the process” to which the Venezuelan was entitled, she noted at a hearing in May. His lawyers announced Tuesday that they plan to file a motion seeking sanctions against the Trump administration for failing to comply with the court’s orders, arguing that the government’s actions should be sufficient grounds to hold it in criminal contempt.

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