A US federal judge has, for the second time, ordered the Trump administration to return a Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador, despite warnings he would face danger there.
The man, 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia, remains jailed in El Salvador’s infamous Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (Cecot), after being mistakenly sent back last month.
In a sharp rebuke, US district Jjdge Paula Xinis on Sunday ruled that the government had no legal grounds to detain or deport Abrego Garcia. “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,” Xinis wrote in her order, as per news agency AP.
Abrego Garcia had previously been granted protection from deportation in 2019 by an immigration judge. Despite this, US immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) deported him in what the White House has called an “administrative error”. The Trump administration has also tried to link him to the MS-13 gang, though his lawyers say there is no evidence to support that claim.
Judge Xinis dismissed government arguments that the courts lacked authority to intervene. “Having confessed grievous error, the defendants now argue that this Court lacks the power to hear this case, and they lack the power to order Abrego Garcia’s return,” she stated in the ruling.
Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni, who represented the government in court, admitted, “We concede he should not have been removed to El Salvador” and when asked why Garcia was held, responded, “I don’t know,” according to AP.
Reuveni has since been placed on administrative leave.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Sunday, “He’s on administrative leave now and we’ll see what happens,” while likening Reuveni’s courtroom remarks to “a defense attorney walking in, conceding something in a criminal matter.”
The department of justice has appealed Judge Xinis’ order to the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that compelling the executive branch to act on foreign soil is unconstitutional.
The Trump administration said such an order would force the US government to “compel a certain action by a foreign sovereign,” which it called “constitutionally intolerable”.
Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a US citizen, has not spoken to her husband since his deportation. His attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, slammed the government’s inaction, saying, “Plenty of tweets. Plenty of White House press conferences. But no actual steps taken with the government of El Salvador to make it right,” reported BBC.
Judge Xinis has ordered that the government “facilitate and effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return by Monday night.
