Key Points
- Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the US legally with a work permit.
- The US government has conceded he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador last month.
- US district judge Pauli Xinis has ruled the government must take steps to bring him back to the US by Monday.
A United States judge has ruled that the Trump administration must return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador back to the US within three days, the latest legal setback for the administration’s hardline deportation policies.
The US has already acknowledged Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the US legally with a work permit — was deported in error as part of three planeloads of migrants flown out last month over alleged ties to violent gangs.
The administration has argued it has no legal authority to bring him back to the country, though Abrego Garcia’s lawyers dispute that.
“They put him there, they can bring him back,” lawyer Andrew Rossman, who joined Abrego Garcia’s legal team on Friday, said in a statement.
After questioning government lawyers, US district judge Paula Xinis ruled at a Greenbelt, Maryland, court hearing on Friday local time (Saturday AEST) that the government must take steps to bring him back to the United States by 7 April.
The Justice Department will appeal the order to the Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a court filing after the hearing.
White House dismisses obligations
In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Xinis should contact El Salvador President Nayib Bukele “because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador”.
In a court filing on Saturday, the US Justice Department called the judge’s order “indefensible” and urged the appeals court to immediately pause the ruling.
The US said Abrego Garcia “has no legal right or basis to be in the United States at all” and that “the public interest obviously disfavors his return, let alone a slapdash one conducted as the result of judicial fiat”.
During the hearing, Abrego Garcia’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told the judge that there was no legal basis for the deportation.
“They admit they had no legal authorisation to remove him to El Salvador,” Moshenberg said.
“The public interest lies in the government following the law.”
Erez Reuveni, a lawyer for the government, conceded that Abrego Garcia should not have been removed.
“That is not in dispute,” Reuveni said.
In an unusual exchange, Xinis grilled Reuveni on why the US couldn’t get Abrego Garcia back — to which Reuveni said he had asked US government officials that question without getting a satisfactory answer himself.
“The absence of evidence speaks for itself,” Reuveni said.
The case is the latest flashpoint in the , which has raised constitutional questions and drawn the rebuke of a judge in Washington who is weighing whether US officials under an 18th-century law.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura (centre), the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, spoke out against Abrego Garcia’s deportation during a news conference. Source: AAP / Jose Luis Magana / AP
On 15 March, Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The administration said it sent two flights to El Salvador that day carrying deportees processed under the rarely used wartime statute and a third flight carrying people deported under other rules.
Abrego Garcia was wrongfully placed on the third flight despite an October 2019 judicial order granting him protection from deportation, a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official has said in a court filing.
Abrego Garcia was stopped and detained by ICE officers on 12 March and questioned about his alleged gang affiliation.
The government asserted in its earlier immigration dispute in 2019 that Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang MS-13, which he has denied.
His lawyers, who also represent his wife and five-year-old child in the US, said in a court filing that the US had failed to take any voluntary steps “to rectify what they themselves describe as an error”.
Abrego Garcia’s wife, who attended the hearing, as well as his child, are US citizens.
The Trump administration has also sent military troops to the US border and reassigned federal agents to focus on immigration enforcement amid ramped-up arrests and deportation efforts.
For the latest from SBS News, and .
