Government Deports Melgar-Salmeron in Violation of Court Order

Federal authorities deported Jordin Melgar-Salmeron to a prison in El Salvador, with the flight leaving a day before what government lawyers had told a court was the earliest he would be deported and 28 minutes after the  court ordered him kept in the USA while fears of torture in his home country were considered.

Melgar-Salmeron is an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who lived in Virginia. A few years ago he was charged with having an unregistered shotgun and with entering the country without authorization. In 2021 he was permitted to plead guilty to the firearms charge and went to prison for it.

After release from prison, immigration officers detained him in 2022 while deportation proceedings were in progress. The proceedings were put on hold in January 2024 while broader litigation about immigration went through the courts.

The hold was lifted in April 2025. By then, Melgar-Salmeron’s case was pending at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Government lawyers asked the court to “expedite” his case, saying officials wanted to deport him by 9 May “at the latest” but also telling the court they would not do so before 8 May.

On 7 May in the morning, a three-judge panel ordered that Melgar-Salmeron must be kept in the USA while his claims that he feared torture in his native El Salvador were considered. Twenty-eight minutes later, a flight on which Immigration and Customs Enforcement put him lifted off, taking him to prison in El Salvador.

In response to the court’s demands for an explanation, the government produced a list of “inadvertent administrative oversights.”

This is the fourth time federal officials have blamed wrongful deportation on administrative errors. Three of these wrongful deportations have taken men to El Salvador, from which the government claims it is helpless to retrieve them.

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