First at TPM: Judge Orders Immigrant Released After Surreal Journey Through Trump’s Gulag Archipelago

INSIDE: Faustino Pablo Pablo ... David C. Guaderrama

Camp East Montana (from City of El Paso)

The Bureaucratic Hellscape of Trump Authoritarianism

This morning I want to focus your attention on another especially Kafkaesque example of the worst of the Trump mass deportation operation combined with — and this is critical — the administration’s lawless behavior in federal courts.

Across numerous cases — the Alien Enemies Act, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, “Cristian“, Nelson Ariel Umanzor Chavez, and others — I have been focused not just on the brutalities of the immigration system (many of which pre-dated Trump), but on the new layers of barbarism plus the administration’s direct challenge to the constitutional role of the federal judiciary in policing the mass deportation operation.

In the case of Guatemalan national Faustino Pablo Pablo, we have both in spades.

In a new ruling Friday, which has not been previously reported, U.S. District Judge David C. Guaderrama of El Paso ordered Pablo released from ICE detention after a surreal nine-month journey through the worst of the Trumpian immigration system compounded by highly misleading representations — if not outright lies — by the administration in court. Because of the limited public remote access to habeas corpus cases in federal court, we are largely reliant on Judge Guaderrama’s publicly available orders for the narrative of what befell Pablo.

Pablo arrived in the United States in 2012 after fleeing Guatemala. While Pablo would come to have an order of removal against him, an immigration judge in 2013 issued a withholding of removal to his native Guatemala under the Convention Against Torture, finding that Pablo had “shown it is more likely than not that he will be tortured by, or with the consent or acquiescence of, the Guatemalan government.”

As a result, Pablo was released under an order of supervision and had been living his life freely in the United States for more than decade until Nov. 5, 2025, when he showed up for a routine ICE check-in appointment in California and was detained without notice or explanation.

On Nov. 17, Pablo was transferred to Camp East Montana, the brutal tent encampment on Ft. Bliss in El Paso. The following day, Pablo filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal court in the Western District of Texas. On Nov. 20, he sought an injunction prohibiting the administration from removing him from the court’s jurisdiction while his habeas case was pending. By the time the Judge Guaderrama issued the injunction later that day, Pablo had already been unlawfully deported to Guatemala.

In an admission that it resisted making in other similar cases, the Trump administration conceded that the violation of the immigration judge’s order barring Pablo’s removal to Guatemala had been “unlawful” and began the process of returning him to the United States.

It wasn’t without, shall we say, hiccups.

When Pablo wasn’t returned as promised on a Dec. 4 flight, Judge Guaderrama decried the “blatant lawlessness” of Pablo’s removal and set a deadline for the administration to return him. As TPM first reported, the administration finally returned him to the United States on Dec. 11.

But the saga was not nearly over for Pablo, a Mayan whose native language is Mam, a fact which will become relevant in a moment. What ensued, as outlined in Judge Guaderrama’s order Friday, is the sort of mind-bending behavior from the administration that is part Trumpian authoritarianism and part bureaucratic hellscape.

Even before Pablo’s return, DHS was threatening him with removal to a third country: “One thing is certain: he is not going to be able to remain in the U.S.,” the bombastic then-DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. “We will deport him to another country.”

After his return, the administration spent the next several months purporting to be preparing to deport Pablo to Mexico, its stated choice as a third-country destination for him.

As he had successfully done for Guatemala, Pablo applied for withholding of removal to Mexico under the Convention Against Torture, but an asylum officer denied his claim of fear of removal in December, clearing the way for his deportation to Mexico.

At that point, the administration repeatedly told Judge Guaderrama that it was prepared to deport Pablo to Mexico and that his injunction barring Pablo’s removal was the only remaining impediment. In his order Friday, Judge Guaderrama documented the administration’s representations to the court:

January 20, 2026: If the Court lifts the stay of removal, ICE will proceed with removing Petitioner to Mexico . . . . The only impediment to removal is this Court’s Order staying removal.

April 6, 2026: If this Court vacated his stay of removal, ERO does not foresee additional procedural hurdles to removing Petitioner to Mexico. Absent any unforeseen circumstances, ERO believes they could effect removal to Mexico within a week of this Court lifting the stay of removal.

July 15, 2026: But for the judicial stay of removal entered in this case, third country removal to Mexico is significantly likely in the reasonably foreseeable future.

In response, Judge Guaderrama lifted his injunction barring Pablo’s removal but in a subsequent order required that an immigration judge review the denial of Pablo’s application for withholding from removal to Mexico. “As far as the Court could tell, the aforementioned IJ review was the Government’s only ‘impediment to removal,’” Guaderrama wrote in his newest order.

But Pablo remained trapped in a bureaucratic maze.

Pablo was scheduled for a hearing in front of an immigration judge on July 27, but his claim of fear of removal to Mexico was not reviewed at the hearing. In addition, the administration did not provide a Mam interpreter so Pablo was unable to understand the proceedings, and Pablo’s attorney wasn’t admitted to the virtual hearing until after it had ended. When Pablo’s attorney was eventually brought in, the immigration judge’s legal assistant informed the attorney that “[t]he judge did not think it was important for [her] to be [t]here,” the attorney later told Judge Guaderrama.

Getting fed up, Judge Guaderrama held an evidentiary hearing of his own on July 29. At issue was whether Pablo’s continued detention was lawful. Even with an order of removal, a detainee cannot be held indefinitely. The Supreme Court has declared detentions lasting up to six months to be presumptively reasonable. Continued detention past that point is lawful only if there is a “significant likelihood” that the detainee will be deported in the “reasonably foreseeable future.”

Guaderrama required the administration to make the still-detained Pablo available for the hearing. Also present for the hearing: two ICE officers with personal knowledge of Pablo’s removal process.

What emerged at the evidentiary hearing was shocking, given the trajectory of Pablo’s case and the many assurances (listed above) from the administration to Judge Guaderrama.

“At that hearing, the Government revealed that Mexico was not (and had never been) a viable option for third-country removal,” Judge Guaderrama recounted in his order.

It turns out that back in December, Pablo had opted out of the only program which would have allowed the administration to deport him to Mexico. So Mexico was never an option, and in the intervening months the administration had not identified any another third country options.

But it gets worse (emphasis Guaderrama’s): “The Government has not taken any steps since December 2025 to identify another country that would accept Petitioner’s removal.”

In a cynically ironic moment at the hearing, an administration lawyer asked Guaderrama, after all this time, for “the opportunity to be able to determine if there’s another third country” to which to deport Pablo.

The developments were eerily similar to those in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. The administration had likewise unlawfully deported Abrego Garcia in violation of an order of withholding. After dragging its feet for months, it reluctantly returned him to the United States to face what was eventually ruled a vindictive prosecution, but in the meantime purported to be preparing to deport him to various African third countries. Ultimately U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland rejected repeated claims by the Trump administration to the court that Abrego Garcia’s third-country deportation was imminent, finding no evidence that the administration had actually taken steps to arrange a third country that would accept him.

In both cases, the claimed plans for third-country deportations ended up looking like a pretext created to justify the punitive continued detention of an immigrant whose wrongful deportations had embarrassed the administration.

In what may have been among the final straws for Guaderrama, the immigration court held another hearing in Pablo’s case on Aug. 5. Again, no Mam interpreter was present for Pablo, and the immigration judge has not reviewed the asylum officer’s denial of Pablo’s fear claim. Pablo was scheduled for another immigration court hearing to be held on Aug. 31.

In a court filing the next day, the administration managed to make things worse by conceding that it has no plan to move on from Mexico as its country of choice for Pablo, Judge Guaderrama recounted:

The Government does not plan to start looking in the near future, either. One day after Petitioner confirmed that he still does “not accept removal to Mexico,” the Government explained that it will wait to look into “an alternative third country for removal” in case Petitioner has a sudden change of heart.

Guaderrama had had enough.

In his 19-page opinion Friday, Guaderrama said that no matter how he applied the law, even when interpreting it least favorably for Pablo, the continued detention of Pablo was a violation of the Constitution and statute.

Guaderrama ordered the administration to release Pablo no later than today and to confirm his release to the court by COB tomorrow. Stay tuned.

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