Trump Officials Deport Group of Mexicans Despite Torture Risk

The Trump administration in recent days deported a group of Mexican nationals who had been barred from removal to their home country after proving to an immigration court that they would likely face torture, according to two people with knowledge of the move.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement head David Venturella reversed the protections, citing diplomatic blockurances received by the State Department from the government of Mexico that the deportees would not be harmed, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the plan.

The decision by ICE to undo the protections appears to be the latest flex of powers by the agency. Typically, officials seeking to strip someone of their deportation protections ask an immigration judge, in a process that allows the immigrant to argue in favor of staying. Immigration attorneys and experts could recall only one other case, that of an Egyptian man in 2008, in which the ICE director single-handedly tried to revoke a person’s deportation protections. But in that case, a court blocked the man’s deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security “followed legal process required by the Constitution, statute, and regulations in removing these criminal illegal aliens to Mexico,” the agency said in a statement. “This group of aliens included gang members, narco traffickers, a child rapist, and a murderer.”

“If these individuals have completed their legal proceedings in a foreign country, their return to our country is appropriate,” the Mexican foreign ministry said in a statement. “As with anyone else, authorities will check whether they have active criminal warrants in Mexico, and if so, we will proceed according to the law. In Mexico, torture is strictly prohibited by the constitution, domestic law, and the international treaties to which we are party.”

Homeland Security officials declined to provide details about the individuals deported to Mexico. Typically, immigrant advocates said, Mexican nationals who were granted these protections claimed fear of cartels and organized crime.

The move appears to be the latest effort by the Trump administration to accelerate the deportations of immigrants, often using extraordinary justifications and without regard to the risks they are likely to face in their home countries.

Earlier this year, the State Department deported dozens of Iranians, including religious minorities, to the Islamic Republic. The government is poised to send home Haitians whose temporary protected status expired this summer, despite widespread lawlessness and unrest in that country.

Officials recently revived the Alien Terrorist Removal Court to attempt to deport a woman alleged to have sympathies with the Islamic State. And last year, the Trump administration deported a group of Venezuelans under a wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act, based on allegations that they were members of the gang Tren De Aragua. The immigrants were sent to an infamous prison in El Salvador. A Times investigation later found that most of those deported did not have criminal records or clear ties to the gang.

The overall effort, with the involvement of the State Department, “really shows this administration’s determination to pursue deportations at the expense of any other objective the government might expend effort on,” said Scott Shuchart, a former top ICE official in the Biden administration.

It also comes as Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has pledged to ramp up enforcement and increase deportations.

Tom Jawetz, a former top attorney at Homeland Security under Mr. Biden, suggested the Trump administration is using the Mexican deportees’ serious crimes to distract from the fact that it “unilaterally overrode a judge’s decision to grant this mandatory form of protection, based upon the conclusion that they were more likely than not to be tortured.”

“If their protection claims were based on some likelihood of torture by cartels or organized crime then there is a risk they’re going to be disappeared upon arrival,” said Robyn Barnard, vice president of refugee and immigrant rights at the advocacy group Human Rights First.

Commonly, foreign nationals fleeing persecution or violence in their home countries apply for asylum in the United States. But many don’t qualify, including some who have committed serious crimes. In those cases, an individual may pursue other forms of relief including a “deferral of removal,” which does not provide a path to citizenship or normalized status, but allows the person to work and blocks authorities from sending them home.

The form of protection the Mexican immigrants had is a deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture, which immigration judges can grant to prevent “removal to the country where he or she is more likely than not to be tortured.”

The Trump administration appears to be using a portion of federal law that allows for the government to terminate the protection if the State Department receives blockurances from the country that the individual will not be tortured.

In 2008, the U.S. government attempted to remove an Egyptian man, Sami Khouzam, who been granted the same form of protection based on blockurances from the government of Egypt that he would not be tortured. The man was alleged to have committed a murder in Egypt. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found that he had been denied necessary due process because he had not been given a chance to review or push back against the decision of the U.S. government.

“The Government provided no prior notice to Khouzam regarding the diplomatic blockurances. Nor did the government provide Khouzam any opportunity to review the blockurances, or to present evidence or arguments challenging the blockurances” the court wrote in its opinion.

The court sent the case back to the immigration courts and blocked the termination of his protections.

“The use of diplomatic blockurances to send someone back to their home country despite a previous finding they would be tortured there has rarely been done and we have successfully argued that the individual must have the ability to test the blockurance,” said Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who argued the Egyptian man’s case. “ICE officials unilaterally deciding that the blockurance is credible is outrageous and unconstitutional.”

Immigrants with deportation protections to their home country are typically some of the thorniest people to remove. ICE officials spend significant resources and effort in trying to deport them, including to third countries. Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported more than a dozen immigrants, most of whom had protection from being deported to their home countries, to Cameroon.

Last year, the U.S. government previously wrongfully removed Kilmar Abrego Garcia to his home country of El Salvador. Mr. Abrego had a form of non-asylum protection called a withholding of removal. He was eventually returned to the United States. Trump administration officials have vowed to remove him to a third country.

In 2025, around 4,000 people received a form of deportation protection from an immigration judge, including deferral of removal, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed to this report.