SAN DIEGO — Last month, a 20-year-old Guatemalan man who came to the United States when he was 2 years old was detained at a gas station by heavily armed men in black military-style uniforms, sent to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the notorious immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, and eventually ended up on a deportation flight back to Guatemala, according to a sworn declaration filed this week in San Diego federal court.

But the man should have never been detained nor deported, according to his attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, because he was in the U.S. legally under a historic class-action settlement pertaining to the first Trump administration’s unconstitutional family-separation policy.

On Thursday, attorneys from the ACLU were back in San Diego federal court arguing that the Guatemalan man and various members of at least six families who were also in the U.S. legally under the family-separation settlement have been deported in violation of both the settlement and a more recent order from the San Diego-based judge overseeing the litigation.

In addition to those who have been deported, about two dozen other individuals with temporary legal protection provided by the family-separation settlement have been detained for unknown reasons, often while checking in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told the judge Thursday.

Gelernt asked the judge to order the government to return the people it has deported and release those it has detained, as well as for an order requiring the government to provide an explanation any time it detains any of the roughly 9,000 people with legal protections provided by the settlement.

“This is an extreme situation where these individuals are so traumatized, they went through so much, they negotiated a settlement that provides certain, specific rights, and now they’re being removed,” Gelernt told reporters outside court. “It’s traumatizing them once again. These are families that have not yet gotten over the trauma of losing their little children, and now they’re being thrown in detention again.”

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw did not issue a ruling Thursday nor comment on the arguments made by Gelernt and a government attorney. He is expected to issue a written ruling in the near future. Since last summer, Sabraw has repeatedly ruled that the Trump administration has violated the terms of the settlement and ordered the government to rectify those violations.

“The Trump administration has been violating the settlement from Day One” of his second term, Gelernt said outside court. “We had hoped that the Trump administration would acknowledge the illegality of (his first-term family separations) … and acknowledge how much harm they caused, and comply with the letter of the settlement and the spirit, but they’re doing neither.”

Daniel Schutrum-Boward, a trial attorney with the Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation, argued on Thursday that the Trump administration was legally justified in deporting some of the families who are members of the class-action lawsuit. He argued that one family of four left the U.S. voluntarily and should not be allowed back into the U.S., though he acknowledged that some individuals who have been deported should be allowed back — including the young Guatemalan man who was detained at “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Thursday’s hearing, and a series of similar hearings that have taken place since last May, are centered on a settlement that came out of a lawsuit the ACLU filed in 2018 challenging President Donald Trump’s policy during his first term of systematically separating families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Sabraw ruled in 2018 that the policy was unconstitutional. The focus of the litigation then turned to reunifying families.

The Biden administration inherited the case and reached a settlement with the ACLU in 2023. One component of the agreement barred the federal government, for at least eight years, from reenacting immigration policies that systematically separate children and parents. The other component mandated that the government provide the families it had separated parole to legally enter the U.S. and certain services, such as legal support for immigration and work authorization claims.

“Under the settlement, what was negotiated was that individuals would be allowed to remain here and work so that they could apply for asylum,” Gelernt said. “They’re all going to apply for asylum, or are awaiting asylum decisions.”

Gelernt said there is nothing in the settlement that guarantees they will be granted asylum. “But at least they’re going to have a right to apply,” he said.

Gelernt and the ACLU have spent most of the past year arguing that the Trump administration is breaching the settlement in various ways, such as not providing most of the services it’s obligated to provide. The Trump administration argued that it was justified in letting those services lapse because the main government contractor hired to provide the services was “likely violating” civil rights laws by having a diversity, equity and inclusion program.

Sabraw rejected the government’s DEI argument and thus far has consistently sided with the ACLU and the separated families. He ruled in both June and July that the administration was violating several provisions of the settlement and must provide the services as obligated. In August, he ruled that the separated families will have an additional year to seek asylum to make up for the delays in services caused by the government’s breaches. He also ordered the government to stop deporting people covered by the settlement.

Among those whom the ACLU has argued have been wrongly deported are a mother and her three children, one of whom is a U.S. citizen, who are now living in hiding in Honduras, according to a sworn declaration from the mother. That family was deported in July, more than three weeks after Sabraw ordered a stop to deportations for members of the class-action settlement.

Schutrum-Boward, the government attorney, argued Thursday that the family deported to Honduras left the U.S. voluntarily.

In addition to the question of deportations and detentions, the ACLU and the government have asked Sabraw to rule on an issue centered around fees imposed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Congress passed last year. The law imposed new, higher fees on people on immigration parole in the U.S. The government argued that those fees should apply to the families covered by the settlement, while the ACLU argued that the terms of the settlement provide an exemption from such fees.

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