The Judge Trump Called Biased Because of His Mexican Heritage Will Hear an Upcoming Deportation Case

Judge Gonzalo Curiel will preside in the case of Juan Manuel Montes Bojorquez, a 23-year-old man who is currently involved in proceedings surrounding his immigration status, according to CNN. Judge Curiel came to prominence in the news last summer, when he was the judge involved in a case against Trump University.

During that case, Trump claimed that Judge Curiel could not be an objective figure because he is “Hispanic” and “Mexican” and Trump himself at the time was claiming that he would build a wall on the border between the U.S. and Mexico if elected. “He’s a Mexican. We’re building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings—rulings that people can’t even believe,” said Trump, according to The Huffington Post.

In a later statement on the situation, Trump “claimed that he was ‘justified,’ but that his words had been ‘misconstrued’” according to NPR. Unsurprisingly, Trump was reluctant to publicly admit his racism at that point in his campaign.

Judge Curiel was born in Indiana and has Mexican heritage, and was at one point the target of an assassination plot by a Mexican drug cartel when he was a federal prosecutor in California in the 90s.

As for the upcoming case, Montes Bojorquez recently announced he would be suing the Trump administration for failing to provide information about his arrest in February of this year under the Freedom of Information Act. He was arrested for apparently not complying with the terms of his immigration status.

Government and immigration officials claim that Montes Bojorquez was never detained or deported at all, while his attorneys defend that he was in fact detained and that he was detained "without due process," hence the Freedom of Information Act suit. 

Trump has yet to comment on the case of Montes Bojorquez or Judge Curiel’s role, but he did tweet this the day that the lawsuit was announced, and I’m not sure it’s a coincidence, considering Trump’s discourse on race has been racially inflammatory from the start.

According to CNN, “The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether the President feels Curiel will be a fair judge in the matter.”