The Trump administration has admitted to deporting yet another immigrant in violation of a court order, making it the fourth known case since President Donald Trump’s second term began.
As Politico explains, Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, had been in immigration detention since 2022, while deportation proceedings against him were pending.
On May 7, soon after a federal appeals court had ordered the government to keep Melgar-Salmeron in the country, authorities deported him back to El Salvador, a move the Trump administration is now blaming on “a confluence of administrative errors.” The errors included missed emails and an incorrect roster of passengers on the May 7 deportation flight.
Melgar-Salmeron’s case is similar to several others, including that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador in contravention of a court order in March, and a Guatemalan man known as O.C.G., who was deported to Mexico despite fears of persecution.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration admitted that O.C.G.’s deportation was an accident and the result of an error in the software used to track deportations.
ICE initially claimed that O.C.G. had told officers he wasn’t afraid of being sent to Mexico, but later retracted those assertions.
A third man, Daniel Lozano-Camargo, was also wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March despite there being a legal settlement in place barring his deportation.
Melgar-Salmeron, a longtime resident of Virginia, was placed in immigration detention in 2022 after serving a prison sentence for possessing an unregistered shotgun. In January 2024, his immigration proceedings were put on hold by the Biden administration amid litigation over immigration policy.
In April, the Trump administration sought to lift that hold, asking the New York 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal to expedite Melgar-Salmeron’s appeal and indicating it wanted to deport him by May 9 “at the latest,” assuring the court it would not act before May 8.
Despite those assurances, less than half an hour after a May 7 order from the court that Melgar-Salmeron be kept in the U.S., he was loaded onto a plane and deported to El Salvador, where he now sits in prison.
In response to the court’s questions about the deportation, Justice Department attorney Kitty Lees explained that “several inadvertent administrative oversights” led to Melgar-Salmeron’s removal.
Those oversights included different ICE offices listing different dates for Melgar-Salmeron’s deportation, an email flagging his deportation not being forwarded to the ICE officer overseeing his case, and confusion over his inclusion on the flight manifest following an initial failure to appear for boarding.
Of the four people wrongfully deported in recent months, two—Abrego Garcia and Lozano-Camargo—remain in detention in El Salvador. In the case of O.C.G., the Trump administration says it has taken steps to arrange a flight for him to be returned to the U.S. from Mexico following a court order that the government must work to facilitate his return.
