The Trump administration said it would not provide information on how it will get a wrongly deported Maryland dad home by a Friday morning deadline because the timeframe a judge imposed was “impracticable.”
In effect, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is openly defying a court order that requires it to provide details about 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts and how he will be brought back stateside.
Abrego Garcia was flown to a mega prison in El Salvador last month due to an “administrative error.” Despite the DOJ admitting its mistake, it argued it did not have the authority to bring Abrego Garcia home because he was now in the custody of El Salvador.
Maryland District Court Judge Paula Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, disagreed and ruled that Abrego Garcia must be returned stateside, where he has an American wife and child and was working legally as a sheet metal apprentice prior to being taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during what he believed to be a routine traffic stop.
The issue reached the Supreme Court on Thursday. The high court, which has a conservative majority, ruled unanimously that the Trump administration must take steps to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.
Xinis granted an extension for the government to release a return plan on Friday—from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.—but refused to grant a request by government attorneys to push the deadline to Wednesday.
“This court amended its prior order and made clear what the government must do consistent with the Supreme Court’s directive,” she said in court Friday, according to Politico.
Xinis later added: “The Supreme Court has spoken quite clearly, and yet I can’t get an answer.”
Until Abrego Garcia is returned, Xinis said she will require the DOJ to update her on his location and status, what efforts are being undertaken to get him home, and what efforts it may take going forward to return him, reported Politico.
The White House has attempted to paint Abrego Garcia as a “leader” in the violent MS-13 cartel, but his loved ones and attorneys say that could not be further from the truth.
The president himself has weighed in on Abrego Garcia’s case, saying Tuesday: “We have judges that are out of control that say, ‘Oh bring him back, bring him back.’ We don’t want him back.”
Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. at 16 because a rival gang of MS-13 had been extorting and threatening his family over their pupusa business in San Salvador, he claimed in court while pursuing an asylum case.
Abrego Garcia claimed gang members had pressured him to join them, but he refused, so he came to America to avoid violent repercussions. He filed for asylum in 2019 but was denied because a judge said his application came too long after he entered the country illegally.
Still, an immigration judge ruled that Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador because he may be persecuted there. His loved ones cited that ruling in a lawsuit against the federal government—and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—demanding he be returned to the U.S. from his home country.
Other challenges from those sent to El Salvador may soon follow. An investigation by Bloomberg uncovered that 90 percent of the supposed “worst of the worst criminals” who were sent to El Salvador have no U.S. criminal record at all.
The Trump administration’s defiance of court orders has left Democrats incensed.
Some, like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), fear the Trump administration will ship away its rivals without due process if they are able to get away with doing so to Abrego Garcia.
“If Trump gets away with destroying Due Process for Kilmar Garcia, he’ll think he can sweep anyone off the street and ship them to a prison in an authoritarian state to escape our Constitution,” Raskin wrote in a statement Friday. “We must heed the Supreme Court and get him back.”
