In August 2018, during President Trump’s first term, an Iraqi immigrant named Muneer Subaihani went missing.
A refugee who had been living in the United States for nearly 25 years, Mr. Subaihani was among hundreds of Iraqis who had been protected from deportation under a federal court order. His lawyers figured he was still in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he had been placed after he was swept up in an ICE raid.
A search of the federal ICE database turned up nothing, so the attorneys went to the Justice Department, looking for an answer. Within a day, they got one.
The government said it had made a mistake, according to Margo Schlanger, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who was one of Mr. Subaihani’s lawyers. Mr. Subaihani had been deported to Iraq, in violation of the court order.
The case has striking similarities to one that is playing out now in Mr. Trump’s second term, after the United States deported a Salvadoran man because of what the government has acknowledged was an “administrative error.”
But the Trump administration’s response in the two cases could not be more different, a sign of how emboldened Mr. Trump has become in his defiance of the courts and in his determination to take a hard line on deportations, regardless of legal constraints.
In Mr. Subaihani’s case, the government recognized its error to the federal court, setting off a monthslong odyssey to track down and retrieve a man who never should have been deported in the first place.
The Salvadoran man, 29-year-old Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, is facing a very different path. Trump officials have accused Mr. Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang, although he has never been charged with being in a gang and they acknowledge his deportation was an error.
U.S. officials would not have to search far to find Mr. Abrego Garcia because they know exactly where he is: a notorious Salvadoran prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center. But Mr. Trump and his top officials have argued that the case is out of their hands. Only El Salvador can decide to send the man back, the Trump administration says.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, a Trump ally who visited the White House on Monday, made clear he would not be sending Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States, calling the idea “preposterous.” Mr. Abrego Garcia, a father of three who is married to an American citizen, is now facing an indefinite lockup in El Salvador.
“The administration’s unwillingness to work to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States is the complete opposite of how it handled Mr. Subaihani’s case,” said Miriam Aukerman, an attorney with the A.C.L.U. of Michigan. “ICE immediately and affirmatively went to the court to acknowledge that it had violated the court’s order, and then worked — pursuant to court orders — to facilitate his return, including coordination with the U.S. Embassy in Iraq and communication with the Iraqi government.”
In one court document from Aug. 23, 2018, the government owned up to its mistake, saying Mr. Subaihani had been removed to Iraq despite the court’s order.
Locating Mr. Subaihani was complicated because nobody knew where he had gone, or even if he had made it to Iraq. By September 2018, several weeks after Mr. Subaihani had been deported, a federal judge demanded ICE go to great lengths to find him.
ICE officials complied, explaining to the court that they were in touch with State Department staff in Iraq and in other countries he had transited through. They even called airline officials — Mr. Subaihani had been deported on a commercial flight — for more on his whereabouts.
By late September, ICE officials notified the court that they had found evidence Mr. Subaihani had made it to Iraq. In October, Mr. Subaihani’s attorneys — who had hired private investigators to help look for him — set about working with ICE to get him back to the United States.
Mr. Subaihani told an NPR station at the time that he hid during his sojourn in Iraq.
“I stayed in that house six months. I’m not going nowhere,” he said to the station, WPLN, Nashville’s NPR affiliate. “It’s not safe.”
In January 2019, he was back on U.S. soil.
“I’m so happy,” he said. “I can’t believe it.” His location is currently unknown.
The next steps for Mr. Abrego Garcia are unclear. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said the Trump and Bukele administrations were playing “political games” with her husband’s life.
“My heart is heavy, but I hold on to hope and the strength of those around me,” she said.
