U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee, rejected the administration’s argument that it could not bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States by late Monday evening.
“Neither the United States nor El Salvador have told anyone why he was returned to the very country to which he cannot return, or why he is detained at CECOT,” Xinis wrote, in reference to the prison.
“That silence is telling,” she continued. “As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador —let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere.”
Xinis, a district judge in Maryland, said that “to avoid clear irreparable harm, and because equity and justice compels it, the Court grants the narrowest, daresay only, relief warranted: to order that Defendants return Abrego Garcia to the United States.”
Xinis ruled on Friday that the administration must return Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national with protected legal status. He was mistakenly deported despite an immigration judge’s 2019 ruling that shielded him from deportation to the country, where he faced likely persecution by local gangs. The Trump administration had argued that Xinis did not have the authority to order the Trump administration to broker his return.
Abrego Garcia was arrested in Maryland and deported in March.
Xinis, in her Sunday order, claimed that the prison in El Salvador “intentionally mixes rival gangs” and said labeling him MS-13 has left him at risk of reprisal. She added that the prison in El Salvador is known to deprive prisoners of food, water, and shelter and “fosters routine violence.”
“Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention of the INA,” Xinis wrote, referring to the Immigration and Nationality Act.
JUDGE ORDERS TRUMP OFFICIALS TO RETURN MISTAKENLY DEPORTED MARYLAND MAN
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer has said the government has done nothing to get his client back, even after admitting its errors.
“Plenty of tweets. Plenty of White House press conferences. But no actual steps taken with the government of El Salvador to make it right,” he told the judge on Friday.
