GREENBELT, Maryland — In a contentious court hearing on Friday, Trump administration attorneys argued before a federal judge in Maryland that they should be allowed to withhold information regarding efforts to facilitate the return of a Salvadoran man to the United States.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains in the Salvadoran prison system despite orders from a federal judge and Supreme Court calling for the government to facilitate his return to the United States.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said the government’s refusal to provide certain information in the case has been “an exercise in utter frustration.” In a back and forth that has continued for weeks, Xinis has ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release and provide documentation on what steps it has taken, if any, to comply with that order.
Government lawyers said the administration has not been able to answer questions about Abrego Garcia’s case because that information would be considered protected under “state secrets” or “deliberative process” privileges that should not be shared with the public.
On Friday, Xinis said the administration has not made a good faith effort to comply with the court order. She repeatedly called on the administration to show how turning over evidence of actions it has taken or will take to return Abrego Garcia would pose a reasonable danger to foreign affairs.
“There is simply no detail. This is basically, ‘take my word for it,’” the judge said.
Attorney Jonathan Guynn said the government believes it has complied with the judge’s order and provided its argument for why certain details should not appear in court documents and testimony. The government has argued that revealing additional information could compromise state secrets or foreign relations.
The attorney also provided an update on Abrego Garcia, saying that he was in good health and in a prison in Santa Ana in El Salvador where he was moved after spending a few weeks in the supermax mega-prison to which he was first deported.
Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland with his wife and three children when he was arrested by immigration agents and deported to El Salvador in March. The Trump administration has accused him of being a member of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang and used that in its justification for deporting him to his home country — despite a judge’s order from 2019 barring him from being sent there.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia have argued that the Trump administration has been “stonewalling” the court.
“We’re not even allowed to pose those basic questions at depositions without running into the roadblock of state secrets,” attorney Andrew Rossman told the court on Friday.
Abrego Garcia’s team said the discovery they’ve received from the government thus far has been inadequate, and Xinis appeared to agree. The plaintiffs said they received 164 documents, and 132 of them were photocopies of court filings and their own discovery requests. Rossman said that of the remaining 32 new documents, half were related to Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s recent trip to El Salvador to see Abrego Garcia.
Rossman said the government logged 1,140 documents as “privileged,” in “every manner of privilege that I’ve ever heard of.”
“My head is spinning, your honor,” he said.
Rossman also said it was “deeply disturbing” that while the administration has claimed in court that it’s complying with the order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release, high-ranking officials including Trump himself have contradicted that in public.
The administration’s claims, Xinis says, have been hampering efforts to get to the bottom of whether the government has disobeyed the court order by not facilitating the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States.
Over the past several days, there have been almost a dozen sealed filings on the case docket, with Abrego Garcia’s legal team seeking specific documents and information, and the government arguing it cannot reveal certain information, even to the judge in some cases.
“Nearly all the additional materials Plaintiffs demand are protected by the state secrets and deliberative process privileges and so cannot be produced,” U.S. attorneys wrote in a brief on Monday.
Among the sealed materials are copies of the deposition transcripts of three government witnesses. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers told the court that the three officials were instructed by the Department of Justice to decline to answer certain questions on the basis of the “state secret” or “deliberative process” privileges, or both.
Xinis has asked the government for the legal and factual reasons for invoking those privileges. She also took issue with the number of documents being sealed in this case.
The court hearing continued behind closed doors on Friday. Xinis indicated she would soon issue an order on the matter.
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