A judge in the federal government upheld her request Tuesday for the U.S. to continue efforts to recover an MS-13 gang member suspect who was illegally deported to El Salvador, rejecting comments from that nation’s president against letting Kilmar Abrego Garcia free.
Judge Paula Xinis stated that she would have a two-week dash to get to the bottom of U.S. attempts to bring back Mr. Abrego Garcia, including requiring testimony from senior Trump officials. She will then consider holding the government in contempt if she believes there has been willful stonewalling.
The judge rejected the objections of the Justice Department and threw out President Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s Monday remarks that Mr. Abrego Garcia will remain in El Salvador’s terrorist prison.
She lamented that her demands are not being met with any sense of urgency to return Mr. Abrego Garcia.
“Up until now, the defendants seem to have done nothing and offered no legal or factual justification for not doing so,” she wrote in a Tuesday written order.
The case has been a dramatic cause célèbre for Democrats and liberal activists, who have applauded Judge Xinis, denounced Mr. Trump and Mr. Bukele, and declared the issue cannot be resolved with anything less than overturning Mr. Abrego Garcia’s March 15 deportation.
Demonstrations outside the Maryland courthouse attracted hundreds. Signs included “Defend Democracy” and “Due Process. Jim Stewartson, a liberal activist, adapted a post-World War II poem to compare Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation to Nazi Germany and the Salvadoran prison to death camps.
“First, they came for Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Then they came for ‘homegrowns.’ Then they came for you,” he said. “Say his name. Or die regretting you didn’t. This is not a drill.”
Democrats dismiss the charges of MS-13 affiliation and Mr. Abrego Garcia’s illegal immigrant status. Instead, they characterize him as a “Maryland resident,” “a father” and “a sheet metal apprentice.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Md. Democrat, said he was going to make a trip to El Salvador on Wednesday in an effort to visit Mr. Abrego Garcia in person at the prison.
“My hope is to visit Kilmar and check on his wellbeing and to have constructive discussions with government officials regarding his release,” Mr. Van Hollen said.
The situation intensified after Mr. Trump was videotaped Monday telling him that he wanted to send “homegrowns” to El Salvador and asked Mr. Bukele to construct more prisons. That was in reference to the proposal floated by the White House to send U.S. citizens overseas for imprisonment.The White House indicated Tuesday that the proposal is being considered, but Mr. Trump will proceed only if it is legal and will employ it only in extreme instances of criminal behavior.The mere prospect has enraged Democrats.
Now is the time for my Republican colleagues to act. You can no longer remain silent in the face of a constitutional crisis,” Illinois Democrat Sen. Richard J. Durbin said.
Trump administration officials have been amazed that Democrats would stand up for a man who was determined by an immigration judge to be an MS-13 member, the brutal Salvadoran gang, and whom the Department of Homeland Security has accused of participating in human “trafficking.”
What the liberal left and so-called fake news are doing to make him a media darling is nauseating,” declared Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.White House border czar Tom Homan called on Democrats to look to their own house and call for changes to Democratic-controlled sanctuary jurisdictions instead of feting Mr. Abrego Garcia.
“Correct the problem with Boston. Correct the problem that recently occurred in Washington state,” Mr. Homan said. “Two illegal aliens tortured a woman and left her to die by drilling into her to try to get her money, her access to her ATM stuff, but [the Democrats] are heading down to El Salvador. It makes zero sense.”
The fiery rhetoric notwithstanding, Judge Xinis declared that the question before her court is what the U.S. has done to request Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody and to “facilitate” his return. To that end, she authorized legal discovery, an opportunity for Mr. Abrego Garcia’s family to depose high-ranking government officials who have submitted affidavits in the case.
“If not this court, who?” Judge Xinis said, requiring haste from both sides. “Let’s get to the bottom of it.”
She also instructed the government’s lawyer that there would be no tolerance for “gamesmanship or grandstanding.
She short of asserting that she could simply order the White House to call for his freedom from El Salvador. She indicated she wants to get a record of what has been done and then hear arguments about what else she could possibly order.
Mr. Abrego Garcia, who is an illegal immigrant to the United States, was deported to El Salvador on March 15. He has been detained since then at that nation’s Terrorism Confinement Center.
He was among three planeloads of migrants the U.S. deported that day. Some, the U.S. stated, were Salvadoran nationals and members of MS-13, whom El Salvador stated it wanted returned for intelligence reasons.
Others were Venezuelans whom the Trump administration claimed were members of Tren de Aragua, another infamous gang with Venezuelan origins but which penetrated the U.S. during the Biden era.
The U.S. government has now designated both gangs as terrorist organizations, and Mr. Trump has used the Alien Enemies Act to expedite their deportations.
An immigration judge initially ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia to be deported in 2019 but appended an addendum to his order — so-called “withholding of removal” — stating that the only destination place he could not be sent was El Salvador because Mr. Abrego Garcia had the risk of persecution or torture in El Salvador.
Yet another immigration judge concluded that he was a member of MS-13 on a police report of a confidential source in Prince George’s County, Maryland. That source identified Mr. Abrego Garcia by gang nickname and position.
He had been residing in Maryland with his son and wife, having to check in periodically with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, when he was arrested and placed on one of the March 15 flights in spite of the prohibition against being returned to El Salvador.
Homeland Security and White House officials called that deportation a “mistake” but have hesitated to return him now that he is off American soil.
Mr. Bukele, seated with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Monday, confirmed that Mr. Abrego Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador, is currently in the custody of his government. He adamantly refused releasing and returning him.
“How do I send him back to the United States, as I clandestinely send him to the United States?” Mr. Bukele said. “Of course, I am not going to do it.”
Judge Xinis wasn’t swayed. In her Tuesday written order, she questioned the U.S. assertion that El Salvador has control over its citizen, referencing an Associated Press report that stated America is paying El Salvador $6 million to detain hundreds of individuals.
The Trump administration, in a court filing Tuesday, stated that if El Salvador released Mr. Abrego Garcia and he arrived at an American port of entry, the administration would take him into custody and seek to deport him to El Salvador or to a third country.
The government maintains that the 2019 suspension of his deportation to El Salvador is now invalid since there is no withholding of removal in the case of terrorism.
