The Trump administration has made a rare admission of guilt in the fraught case of a Mexican trans woman they deported back to her home country, in violation of a court order that stated she’d likely face torture there.

Nevada resident Britania Uriostegui Rios lost her status as a lawful permanent U.S. resident in 2023, after pleading guilty to a charge of felony assault with a deadly weapon. She received a suspended criminal sentence and was placed in deportation proceedings in March.

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Homeland Security has been trying to deport her ever since.

But the judge in her immigration case barred the Trump administration from sending Uriostegui Rios to Mexico, finding a likelihood she’d be tortured or killed as a result of her transgender status, Politico reports.

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Despite the order, lawyers for the woman say that she was abruptly transported from Louisiana to Texas without warning on November 11, and then sent on a bus to Mexico.

Only after her attorneys inquired about Uriostegui Rios’ whereabouts did the Justice Department acknowledge her illegal deportation.

“ICE confirmed that your client was removed to Mexico inadvertently,” a DOJ attorney wrote in a November 12 email filed in federal court.

A day later, the attorney added: “ICE stands ready to remedy the inadvertent removal by allowing your client to voluntarily reenter the United States if your client wishes to do so.”

That doesn’t mean Uriostegui Rios will be allowed to stay in the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security is negotiating with other countries to take her in, while Uriostegui Rios’ lawyers are working to keep her out of ICE custody in the interim.

They cite her months-long detention as testing the constitutional limits for holding immigrants while they await deportation, and don’t trust the same authorities who illegally deported her in the first place to properly keep her in custody.

Homeland Security has attempted without success to send Uriostegui Rios to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Complicating Uriostegui Rios’ relocation is a long rap sheet of offenses committed in the U.S. before her latest felony conviction.

Not long after her arrival to the U.S. in California in 2003, she was convicted after the first of several arrests for solicitation, while other charges were dismissed.

In Nevada, Uriostegui Rios was arrested and released multiple times for drug possession before an incident in Las Vegas in 2023 that earned her a felony conviction for assault with a deadly weapon. She was sentenced to 36 months’ probation.

A U.S. permanent resident convicted of a felony can face loss of status, deportation, and permanent denial of reentry to the United States.

At the heart of Uriostegui Rios’ case is her status as a transgender woman facing persecution in her home country, and the administration’s disregard for a judge’s order recognizing that danger despite her past crimes.

“The administration says that the immigration courts ultimately are the final arbiters on these issues and decisions,” Nora Ahmed, legal director for the ACLU of Louisiana, said, “yet they still flagrantly violated it.”

“There can be no excuse for that,” she added. “It’s not an ‘oops.’ How can you ‘oops’ if someone dies?”

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