A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring three immigrant families back to the United States, ruling that federal immigration agents relied on “lies, deception, and coercion” to deport them in violation of a legal settlement.
U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw determined that the removals undermined a 2023 agreement designed to protect families separated at the southern border under the earlier “Zero Tolerance” immigration enforcement policy. That settlement granted temporary legal status and a pathway to reunification — protections the court now says were effectively erased by the deportations.
In an eight-page decision, Sabraw concluded the government’s actions rendered the settlement’s safeguards “illusory,” meaning they existed in name but not in practice.
“The manner in which each of these removals was affected, in addition to being unlawful, involved lies, deception, and coercion,” Sabraw wrote.
The ruling highlights legal tensions between federal courts and immigration authorities, particularly over due process rights, humanitarian protections, and federal oversight of immigration enforcement. In earlier court filings, government attorneys argued the judge lacked jurisdiction to order the families returned. At the same time, officials maintained that some of the families — including one with valid immigration parole — had left the country “voluntarily.”
Sabraw rejected that characterization.
According to court findings, one mother separated from her 5-year-old daughter in 2018 attended a routine immigration check-in last year. There, officials allegedly told her that her legal status “did not matter” and instructed her to bring her children and their passports.
She was warned that if she did not “self-deport,” her children could be placed in foster care or put up for adoption. The family — which included a 6-year-old U.S. citizen — was then detained in a motel for three days before being flown to Honduras.
The judge noted the psychological toll described in testimony from the mother, who said during a July 2025 check-in that she “wanted to give up” because she “increasingly felt that [she] could not survive in the U.S. under these conditions.”
Sabraw ruled that the federal government must cover the financial cost of returning the families.
“Each of the removals was unlawful, and absent the removals, these families would still be in the United States and have access to the benefits and resources they are entitled to under the Settlement Agreement,” he wrote.
