Judge Says US Has Done ‘Nothing’ to Return Wrongly Deported Man

A US judge admonished a Trump administration lawyer for failing to say how the government is facilitating the return of a Maryland man wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador, a day after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said he’s not sending him back.

US District Judge Paula Xinis said she would order depositions of administration officials as she questioned a Justice Department lawyer Tuesday about the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He was deported March 15 despite a 2019 court order saying he couldn’t be sent to his native country.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, center right, speaks as demonstrators hold signs outside the US District Courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland on April 15.

Photographer: Chris Strohm/Bloomberg

“There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding,” Xinis said in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland. “To date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing.”

On April 10, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration, which admitted that Abrego Garcia was deported through an administrative error, must take steps to “facilitate” his release from Salvadoran custody and return to the US. The high court largely upheld Xinis’s earlier order.

During a contentious hearing, Xinis said there was no evidence that any steps have been taken to return Abrego Garcia. She expressed frustration and said she would not rule out holding the government in contempt of court, but would hold off for now on those proceedings. Instead, she said, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers should to be able to collect evidence from the government on an expedited basis.

Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign told the judge that “significant steps” have been taken by the government, including the issue being raised in the Oval Office with Bukele on Monday.

Xinis shot back that the Oval Office event was not evidence of compliance with her order.

Read More: Bukele Says Deported Maryland Man Won’t Be Returned to US

The hearing came a day after Bukele appeared in the White House with President Donald Trump,saying he didn’t “have the power to return him to the United States.”

“How can I smuggle? How can I return him to the United States? I smuggle him into the United States? I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said.

The hearing on Tuesday showed the heightened tensions between Trump and the federal judiciary and suggested the case may return to the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration has asserted US courts lack authority over foreign policy. In the Oval Office Monday, Trump deferred questions to officials at the meeting, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

They insist that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 criminal gang and say his fate is up to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia and his lawyers deny he is a gang member, and say he fled his native country to avoid extortion by another gang.

“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him, that’s not up to us,” Bondi said. “If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.”

Abrego Garcia came to the US in 2011 to live with family and has no criminal record in the US or El Salvador, according to his lawyers. He was lawfully living in Maryland before he was sent last month with 250 alleged gang members to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.

Read more: US Disputes Basis for Returning Man Wrongly Sent to El Salvador

An immigration judge had ruled in 2019 that Abrego Garcia couldn’t be sent to his native El Salvador because he faced gang-based extortion.

Shortly before the hearing, Joseph Mazzara, a top lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security, filed a written statement saying the administration didn’t have authority to force the return of a non-citizen from another country.

If Abrego Garcia did show up at a US entry point, Mazzara said, officials would allow him to enter, take him into custody and then immediately take steps to send him away again, either to El Salvador or to another country.

Mazzara wrote that the administration believed it could overcome the 2019 order because of Abrego Garcia’s alleged membership in the MS-13 gang, which it designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement on Tuesday evening that he would travel to El Salvador on Wednesday and hoped to “visit Kilmar and check on his well being and to hold constructive conversations with government officials around his release.”

(Updates with Van Hollen announcing visit to El Salvador, in final paragraph.)

--With assistance from Zoe Tillman.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net;
David Voreacos in New York at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman, John Harney

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