Utah judge orders return of man who was wrongfully deported

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

A Utah judge has ordered the return of Federico Reyes Vasquez to the U.S.
Reyes was deported despite a Dec. 22 order to remain in the country.
ICE officials are working with Reyes' attorney to facilitate his return by Jan. 21.

PROVO — An immigrant living in the Provo area who was deported last week to Mexico — contravening a federal judge's order — must be returned to the United States.

In a decision on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jill Parrish ordered federal immigration officials to facilitate the return of Federico Reyes Vasquez, now in central Mexico. She cited the high-profile court case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, previously living in Maryland, deported by immigration authorities to El Salvador and then returned after the man's backers charged he had been wrongfully removed.

"My dad being deported has completely broken my heart and shaken my entire world," Esggar Reyes, the man's oldest child, said Friday in a statement, noting his removal just two days before Christmas. "My kids ask about him, and it's heartbreaking not knowing how to explain such an unfair situation to them."

Parrish on Dec. 22 had ordered federal officials not to deport Reyes, detained by immigration officials on Dec. 19, but on Dec. 23 he "was nevertheless removed in direct violation of the court's order," the judge wrote in Wednesday's decision. She ordered that he be returned by Jan. 21 so his case can get additional review. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to her decision, have said they are working with Reyes' attorney, Alec Bracken, to make that happen.

Federal authorities maintain that Reyes had a deportation order issued against him, Bracken said Friday, but they haven't presented proof of that in court. Bracken said his client, who came from Mexico to the United States 21 or so years ago, "doesn't have status" here and that he is considering his legal strategy to help the man.

"The most I can share is that I do believe, in my legal opinion, that his removal from the United States was witness tampering, which is a criminal offense, and we will be investigating and exploring those options," Bracken said.

Parrish has yet to make any sort of ruling on Reyes' immigration status, and Bracken charges that due process was not followed in the case. "Every single person living here — regardless of where they were born, when they were born, what their status is — everyone deserves the full protection of the United States Constitution, and what's what makes our country great is the protections that that Constitution offers," he said.

The case is another twist in the aggressive efforts of President Donald Trump and his administration to detain and deport immigrants in the country illegally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security officials didn't immediately respond to queries Friday seeking comment.

'No criminal history whatsoever'

Bracken, who is based in Provo, said Reyes was detained on Dec. 19 in Orem after he was caught up in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation targeting someone else. He's married and has three U.S.-citizen children, but his family members were unable to get any information on his whereabouts, prompting them to reach out to Bracken. Bracken, too, was unable to pinpoint his whereabouts, prompting his Dec. 19 suit in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City on Reyes' behalf against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials.

"One of the issues in this case is that ICE has disabled or turned off their public inquiry line for detained individuals. So if you call ICE and select, 'I want to find out about my family member,' it will disconnect you immediately," Bracken said. He filed the lawsuit "primarily to find out what was happening and what was going on."

Reyes ultimately reached out to his family in Utah on Dec. 23 from Mexico, informing them he had been deported. Bracken said the man was deported to a Mexican border city and subsequently traveled further south to where he has family. Wednesday's decision said Reyes is currently in central Mexico.

"It's been difficult to communicate with him in a foreign country," Bracken said. "I don't know what his current state is now. I mean, he is in a country that he hasn't ... been to in over 20 years, separated from his family at this time."

As far as he and U.S. officials know, Reyes "has no criminal history whatsoever," the attorney said, and his family members are worried.

"The most difficult part about it was they ... didn't know what was happening," Bracken said. "They had a family member who went to work and was taken and they didn't hear back from him until he was already out of the country."

Esggar Reyes said his mother, the man's wife, has been particularly impacted.

"Watching my mom struggle financially and emotionally without her partner has been one of the hardest things I've ever had to witness," particularly during the holiday season, he said. "This separation has affected every part of our lives — emotionally, mentally and financially — and the pain of having our family torn apart so abruptly is something I wouldn't wish on anyone."

While federal officials fought moves to return Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, Bracken said his client hasn't faced that sort of response. "I will say this in the U.S. government's defense, as soon as they were made aware of the deportation, as soon as I informed them that he was unlawfully deported, the U.S. Attorney General's Office began working with me immediately to bring him back," he said.

Still, the turn of events has been disconcerting for him.

"A court's order was not followed in this case. That's probably the most upsetting thing to me when it comes to this is that due process should be served always in this country," Bracken said. "It's what sets our country apart from other countries is that we have these rules in place to keep people from having their rights violated and trampled on regardless of who they are."

Immigration officials say they weren't aware of Parrish's order to keep Reyes in the country, leading to his deportation, according to Wednesday's decision. Parrish said federal officials should cover the cost of transporting Reyes back to the United States and said "attorneys fees are warranted" for the man's legal representation.

Contributing: Cami Mondeaux, Deseret News

Correction: A previous version incorrectly stated the amount of time Federico Reyes Vasquez has been in the United States as 22 years. He has been in the U.S. around 21 years.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.