GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge in Maryland Friday ordered the Trump administration to take immediate steps to return a Maryland man who was deported to a Salvadoran mega-prison by mistake, setting up another high-stakes clash between the White House and the courts.
“This was an illegal act,” U.S. Federal District Judge Paula Xinis told Justice Department lawyers at a federal court hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland about the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who lived in the U.S. legally and had a work permit. Abrego Garcia was arrested and deported last month — despite having been granted protection by an immigration judge in 2019 that should have prevented him from being deported to El Salvador.
Judge Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, April 7. She said keeping him in El Salvador constitutes irreparable harm.
“From the moment he was seized, it was unconstitutional,” Judge Xinis said during the hearing. “If there isn’t a document, a warrant, a statement of probable cause, then there is no basis to have seized him in the first place. That’s how I’m looking at it,” the judge said.
The Justice Department admits that Abrego Garcia was deported because of an administrative error. But DOJ lawyers argued in court papers that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13 and that the judge lacks the authority to order his return since Abrego Garcia is no longer in the U.S.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers told the court that’s nonsense and said the Department of Homeland Security should bring Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador immediately.
“They’re coming before this court and saying we’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of options,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers.
Erez Reuveni, a lawyer for the Justice Department, took a different approach, asking the judge for more time to discuss the matter with his clients in the Trump administration.