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Trump Judge Subjects Immigrant to Possible Torture

Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears(link is external)” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.

 

Judge Paul Matey , nominated by Donald Trump to the Third Circuit, cast the deciding vote in a 2-1 decision affirming the rejection of an immigrant’s claim that he would likely suffer torture if he is sent back to El Salvador. Judge Theodore McKee strongly dissented in the January 2025 decision in Isaac DeJesus Carranza-Cortez v Attorney General.(link is external)

 

What happened in this case? 

 

Isaac DeJesus Carranza-Cortez worked as a truck and taxi driver in El Salvador, where he lived with his family.  Gang members demanded that he pay them almost $200 per month, which he did without reporting to the  police for fear of reprisal. In 2021, he and his wife were driving home and stopped to pick up someone who turned out to be a gang member who pulled a gun on them. The gang member demanded that he pay him $5000 by the end of the month or he would kill him and his family.

 

Carranza-Cortez left the family home that night and went to stay with a relative three hours away,  where he reported the situation to the police. They vaguely stated that they would “help” him, but nothing happened for several weeks. He then left El Salvador and went to the US without authorization, requesting among other things withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) because he was being persecuted for his membership in in a particular social group under CAT as a Salvadoran witness to gang crimes. An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected his case, and he appealed to the Third Circuit.

 

 

How did Judge Matey and the Third Circuit majority rule and why is it harmful?

 

Judge Matey cast the deciding vote in a 2-1 decision that rejected Carranza-Cortez’s claims and affirmed the ruling to deny him relief from deportation. The majority maintained that there was substantial evidence to support the conclusion that Carranza-Cortez “failed to show governmental acquiescence in the private violence” by gangs that he feared.

 

Judge Theodore McKee strongly dissented. He explained that the claim by a police officer that he would “help” was “simply not sufficient to negate record evidence that El Salvadoran gangs infiltrate the police and that the El Salvadoran government is “unwilling or unable to protect Carranza-Cortez if he returns there.” Denial of CAT relief from deportation, McKee concluded, clearly “undermines” the US objective of not involuntarily returning someone to a country where there are “substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

 

The ruling made possible by Judge Matey will surely harm Isaac DeJesus Carranza-Cortez by subjecting him to likely torture when he is sent back to El Salvador. The ruling also threatens other immigrants from El Salvador, particularly when combined with the more harsh immigration policies expected under the Trump Administration. 

 

This decision illustrates the importance of our federal courts to health, welfare and justice and the significance of having fair-minded judges on the federal bench.