Kilmar Abrego Garcia is still imprisoned in El Salvador after the U.S. government illegally sent him there in March. According to the latest filing from his lawyers, the Trump administration is still resisting facilitating his return, despite having been ordered to do so by judges at every level of the court system.
“The Government asks this Court to accept a shocking proposition: that federal officers may snatch residents of this country and deposit them in foreign prisons in admitted violation of federal law, while no court in the United States has jurisdiction to do anything about it,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers wrote Monday in their opposition to the government’s motion to dismiss.
The motion, filed last week, is pending before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered the government to facilitate his return nearly two months ago. The Supreme Court largely backed her order in April, but instead of approving it completely in a way that could’ve ended the matter, the high court’s order left open questions while sending the case back to the Maryland judge for further litigation.
The Supreme Court said on April 10 that Xinis’ order “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” And yet, the government has not done that.
Since then, the lower court litigation has been unfolding too slowly to the liking of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, who said in their opposition filing that the administration is just trying to rehash “recycled arguments” in its dismissal motion. The government can now file a final reply brief before Xinis rules, and that reply would ordinarily be due in two weeks; but Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have asked the judge to cut that due date to one week. “Further briefing on recycled arguments should not prolong a case that has already dragged on far too long for Abrego Garcia and his family,” they wrote. So while news has emerged of yet more immigrants the government has wrongly sent to other countries since Abrego Garcia’s illegal removal, his return is still not in sight. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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