A federal judge scolded the Trump administration on Tuesday for dragging its feet in complying with a Supreme Court order that directed the White House to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador last month.
“To date nothing has been done,” the judge, Paula Xinis, told a lawyer for the Justice Department. “Nothing.”
The stern words came during a hearing in Federal District Court in Maryland, where Judge Xinis said that she intended to force Trump officials to answer questions — both in writing and in depositions — about what they had done so far to get the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, out of the prison.
Noting that every passing day was another that Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, suffered harm in Salvadoran custody, the judge set up a fast schedule for officials to provide documents and sit for depositions.
“We’re going to move,” she said. “There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding.”
The hearing came only one day after President Trump said at an Oval Office news conference that he was powerless in seeking Mr. Abrego Garcia’s freedom. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, sitting beside Mr. Trump, said he had no intention of releasing the man.
The case of Mr. Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal worker the Trump administration accused of being a member of the violent street gang MS-13, has emerged in recent days as yet another flashpoint in Mr. Trump’s aggressive plans to deport immigrants the government has deemed to be criminals, even if there is little evidence to support its claims.
It has also become the latest test of the White House’s willingness to defy court orders and potentially shatter the traditional, but increasingly fragile, balance of power between the executive and judicial branches.
Three courts, including the Supreme Court, have now ruled that the White House is required to take at least some steps toward freeing Mr. Abrego Garcia from a notorious Salvadoran prison, known as CECOT, where he was sent with scores of other migrants on March 15.
Until this week, the Trump administration had acknowledged that he had been inadvertently deported in violation of a previous court order that prohibited him from being sent to El Salvador. On Tuesday, however, top officials, including Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s chief domestic policy adviser, changed course, suddenly declaring that the deportation had been purposeful and legal.
During the hearing, Judge Xinis, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, clearly signaled that she wanted to get to the bottom of the administration’s obfuscations and delays. She couched her decision to compel Trump officials to reveal what they had done behind the scenes as a first step toward figuring out if the administration had been acting in bad faith and ignoring court orders.
In her initial order directing the White House to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador, Judge Xinis found that the Trump administration had flown him out of the country “without notice, legal justification or due process.”
Moreover, she chided government officials for having made “a grievous error” by deporting him, adding that the White House, by then refusing to retrieve him from one of the most “inhumane and dangerous prisons in the world,” had exposed him to harm that “shocks the conscience.”
Days later, a federal appeals court agreed with her, likening Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal from the United States to an official kidnapping and expressing outrage that the Trump administration appeared to have simply abdicated any responsibility to rescue him.
“The facts of this case thus present the potential for a disturbing loophole: namely that the government could whisk individuals to foreign prisons in violation of court orders and then contend, invoking its Article II powers, that it is no longer their custodian, and there is nothing that can be done,” a member of the three-judge panel wrote. “It takes no small amount of imagination to understand that this is a path of perfect lawlessness, one that courts cannot condone.”
When the Supreme Court weighed in, its decision was nuanced and somewhat ambiguous.
The justices endorsed Judge Xinis’s view that the administration needed to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return, but they stopped short of actually ordering it, indicating that even federal courts may not have the authority to require the executive branch to do such an action.
At one point in Tuesday’s hearing, Drew Ensign, a lawyer for the Justice Department, said that the administration agreed that it had to facilitate Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release. But Mr. Ensign advanced a narrow definition of the word, suggesting that the White House could take an entirely passive posture in the matter.
“If Abrego Garcia presents himself at a port of entry,” Mr. Ensign told Judge Xinis, “we will facilitate his entry to the United States.”
Judge Xinis appeared to be skeptical that the White House could simply sit back and wait for someone else to free Mr. Abrego Garcia, pointing out that the word “facilitate” required a more proactive stance.
“Defendants therefore remain obligated, at a minimum, to take the steps available to them toward aiding, assisting, or making easier Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador,” she wrote in an order filed shortly after the hearing ended.
A Salvadoran citizen, Mr. Abrego Garcia was thrust into the national spotlight last month when his family sued the government, claiming he had been wrongfully deported to El Salvador on March 15 along with scores of other Salvadoran men and Venezuelans.
He came to the United States illegally in 2011 and eight years later was arrested while looking for work at a Home Depot in Maryland. An immigration judge initially ordered his deportation, but ultimately determined that he should not be sent back to his homeland because he might face persecution there.
The ruling, known as a “withholding from removal” order, meant that he could stay in the United States with a measure of legal protection.
Last month, however, Mr. Abrego Garcia was suddenly pulled over by federal immigration agents who accused him of being a member of MS-13 and inaccurately told him that his protected status had changed. Within three days, he was on a plane with other migrants to CECOT, which is known for its human rights violations.
In her written order, Judge Xinis said that she would allow Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to make 15 requests for documents and depose as many as six administration officials.
She also said that the lawyers were “entitled to explore the lawful basis — if any — for Abrego Garcia’s continued detention in CECOT, including who authorized his initial placement there and who presently authorizes his continued confinement.”
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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