A federal judge said the Trump administration has three days to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a notorious prison in El Salvador. News4’s Paul Wagner reports.
A federal judge said Friday the government must secure the return of a Prince George’s County, Maryland, man who Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted it deported in error.
More than three weeks after Kilmar Abrego Garcia was detained and flown to a notorious prison in El Salvador, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered that the government return him to the U.S. in about three days, by the end of the day Monday.
The ruling came at the end of a dramatic hearing in which a government lawyer acknowledged to the judge that he couldn't make a case for the deportation.
“We concede the facts. The plaintiff should not have been removed,” a Justice Department lawyer said Friday afternoon in court in Greenbelt.
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Abrego Garcia, 29, was deported because of an “administrative error,” ICE admitted Monday. The Trump administration went on to accuse Abrego Garcia of being in the gang MS-13, which his family denies.
Xinis asked the government lawyer which documents he could produce showing the government had an arrest warrant for Abrego Garcia or an order of removal.
The lawyer said he could not provide either document but argued there was an order of removal on file.
The judge asked how the detention and deportation process began, and the lawyer said he didn’t know.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation appears to be an illegal act by the government, the judge said. She got the government to concede it had no document showing the Salvadoran government had filed any charges against him.
Xinis found Abrego Garcia had a lawful order to remain in the U.S. that specifically said if the government were to ever remove him from the U.S., he should not be sent to El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia’s wife sat at the defense table. The courtroom was packed with family members, members of clergy, union members and supporters. When the judge issued her ruling, the gallery broke out in applause.
“I want to say thank you to everyone that has helped us, that has supported us in fighting this, and we will continue fighting for Kilmar, for my husband," his wife, Jennifer, said.
“The thing that was most striking for me about the hearing was that the attorney for the government, who handled the matter very professionally, had so few answers to the judge’s factual questions. Over and over again, he stated that his clients had not provided him with certain information, that his clients had not provided him with certain documents,” defense attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
“They’ve spent little effort actually making it right. In fact, I think it’s fair to say they’ve spent no effort whatsoever on making it right,” he continued.
It’s unclear whether the Trump administration will abide by the ruling or file an appeal.
A sudden detention and disappearance
Abrego Garcia had just finished his job as a sheet metal worker and was in the car with his young son when ICE pulled him over and detained him.
He was taken to Baltimore and questioned about his alleged ties to MS-13, his wife said in an affidavit. He was then transferred to Louisiana and La Villa, Texas.
Three days after Abrego Garcia was detained, he was flown to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, ICE confirmed.
His wife spoke to him by phone when he was in the U.S. and tracked his location using ICE’s online detainee locator tool. But when he was flown out of the country, he vanished from the online system and she had no idea where he had been taken.
Finally, she recognized him in a video El Salvador’s president posted to X, showing men in white uniforms being frog-marched and having their heads shaved. In a photo of detainees, she recognized his tattoos.
The government said the order to send Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was an “oversight” and was done “in good faith.”
This week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the administration’s decision, claimed Abrego Garcia is a gang member and said he will not return to the U.S.
Attorney Lucia Curiel said Friday that he was accused of being in MS-13 in 2019 and was cleared. She spoke about the conversation she had with him then, when she represented him.
“I delivered the news to him that the judge had cleared him of the reckless, false gang allegations and granted him withholding of removal. I told him that that meant he could live in the U.S. legally, and that the government was prohibited from deporting him to El Salvador. I had never seen him smile so much. That news that I told him was true then and it is true now,” she said.
“The basis for that allegation in 2019 was a confidential informant, you know, one of these anonymous tips,” Sandoval-Moshenberg previously said. “There was never any concrete evidence produced.”
Abrego Garcia has lived in the U.S. since 2011. He left El Salvador as he fled gang violence, including gang members who threatened to kill him in an attempt to extort his parents, Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
Abrego Garcia’s wife, lawyers and supporters held a rally Friday morning to call for his release. “Bring Kilmar home,” their signs said.
“Kilmar, if you can hear me … I miss you so much … and I’m doing the best to fight for you and our children,” his wife said.
At the rally, Abrego Garcia’s wife spoke about how much their three kids miss their dad. She said she found their 10-year-old daughter trying to send him messages on her tablet. The little girl said she wished she could trade places with him.
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