A federal judge insisted Sunday that the Trump administration bring back a Maryland man who was accidentally deported to a high-security prison in El Salvador, rejecting efforts to delay a deadline of Monday for his return to the United States.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a green card holder who is originally from El Salvador and has lived in the United States since 2011, was mistakenly deported to the notorious jail on March 15, along with Venezuelan men whom Trump administration officials claimed were gang members.
Authorities apprehended Abrego Garcia in an Ikea parking lot March 12, according to his attorney, with his 5-year-old autistic son in the back seat of his car.
The Trump administration called his deportation an “administrative error.”
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said Friday that the deportation was unlawful and ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the United States by 11:59 p.m. Monday.
On Saturday, Justice Department lawyers asked Xinis to hold off while the administration appealed her order. She refused.
“Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or office; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador,” she wrote Sunday. “Once there, U.S. officials secured his detention in a facility that, by design, deprives its detainees of adequate food, water, and shelter, fosters routine violence; and places him with his persecutors.”
It’s not clear whether the administration will make the deadline set by Xinis or whether the deadline will hold. The appeals court could issue a decision as soon as Sunday night.
Justice Department lawyers have already claimed they are unable to return Abrego Garcia because he is in Salvadoran custody. And the administration has already been accused in another immigration case of skirting — if not outright ignoring — a judge’s order not to deport Venezuelan migrants to the same Salvadoran prison.
The Justice Department has argued that the court had no power to order Abrego Garcia returned and that it was intruding on President Donald Trump’s foreign policy powers.
Xinis shot back at the arguments Sunday, “They do indeed cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person—migrant and U.S. citizen alike —to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the ‘custodian,’ and the court thus lacks jurisdiction.”
“As a practical matter, the facts say otherwise,” she wrote.
Abrego Garcia, 29, fled El Salvador and came to the United States to escape gang violence when he was a teenager, his lawyer has said. Starting around 2006, gang members stalked, hit and threatened to kidnap and kill him in an attempt to extort his parents, the lawyer said in a court filing.
In 2019, Abrego Garcia and three other noncitizens were arrested looking for work in front of a Home Depot in Prince George’s County, Maryland, according to the filing. Police accused Garcia of involvement in the MS-13 gang, claiming a confidential informant told them he was an active member, according to court documents.
While he was in custody that year, Abrego Garcia contested the allegations that he was a gang member and asked an immigration judge for an order that would prevent his deportation to El Salvador, according to court documents.
An immigration judge granted his request, fearing that his return to El Salvador might result in his torture or death. He was released from custody.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not appeal the judge’s order.
But the Trump administration has maintained that Abrego Garcia is a gang member. In a motion seeking to prevent Xinis’ order from taking effect, the administration argued, without providing any proof, that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member and a threat to American national security.
“The public interest cuts firmly against ordering Abrego Garcia — a member of a designated terrorist organization, who is in turn no longer eligible for withholding relief — back to the United States,” lawyers for the Justice Department wrote. “And on the other side of the ledger,” the lawyers continued, Xinis had failed “to offer any compelling irreparable harm that would justify this injunction.”
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, has repeatedly disputed the administration’s claims, and Xinis has chalked up the government’s allegations to “just chatter.”
“In a court of law when someone is accused of membership in such a violent and predatory organization, it comes in the form of indictment or criminal proceeding so we can assess facts,” she said. “I haven’t seen any of those.”
Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni told Xinis at a hearing Friday that “we concede he should not have been removed to El Salvador” and responded “I don’t know” when Xinis asked why he was being held.
Xinis referred to the remarks in her opinion Sunday.
“As defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere,” she said.
Reuveni was placed on leave after his comments in court.
“At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Bondi likened Reuveni’s comments to “a defense attorney walking, conceding something in a criminal matter.”
“That would never happen in this country,” she said.
