The federal judge overseeing Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s legal challenge over his arrest and removal from the United States is hauling Trump administration officials to court to get to the bottom of the government’s plans for the wrongfully deported Salvadoran immigrant.
Abrego Garcia, whose case has been at the center of Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, is currently locked up in federal custody ahead of a trial on smuggling charges.
If he’s released from pretrial detention, immigration officials intend to arrest and deport him, again, before a trial even begins, according to the Department of Justice.
After government lawyers and top Trump administration officials gave a series of conflicting statements about the fate of Abrego Garcia in recent weeks, District Judge Paula Xinis is ordering officials from the Department of Homeland Security to testify about their plans for his removal — answers that may reveal whether the criminal charges against him had anything to do with complying with court orders for his return.
She scheduled a hearing on July 7. Abrego Garcia could be released from federal custody and turned over to Homeland Security as soon as July 16.
During a hearing in Maryland on Monday, Justice Department lawyer Jonathan Guynn said the administration doesn’t intend to hold Abrego Garcia in “limbo” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement while waiting for his criminal trial.
“He will be removed, as would any other illegal alien in that process,” he said.
His remarks are the latest in a series of conflicting public statements from the administration after Abrego Garcia was abruptly returned to the United States from prisons in El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia had been living in Maryland with his wife and child, both U.S. citizens, along with two other children from a previous relationship, when he was arrested and deported to El Salvador on March 15 — what government lawyers admitted was an “administrative error” that defied an immigration judge’s 2019 order preventing his removal.
But the administration spent weeks battling court orders from federal judges and the Supreme Court to “facilitate” his return, claiming that they were powerless to return him while administration officials publicly asserted he would never again step foot in the United States.
Last month, he was flown back to face a criminal indictment accusing him of illegally transporting immigrants across the country. He has pleaded not guilty.
“Our plan is, he will be taken into ICE custody and removal proceedings will be initiated,” Guynn said during a court hearing last week.
But that same day, a spokesperson for the Justice Department told the Associated Press that the government will try Abrego Garcia on the charges against him before deporting him from the country. The White House also called the Justice Department’s in-court statements “fake news.”
On Monday, Justice Department said they don’t know where the government plans to deport him.
“It’s like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall trying to figure out what’s going to happen,” Judge Xinis said at one point on Monday.
“For three months, your clients told the world they weren’t going to do anything to bring him back,” she said, pointing to statements from Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the president himself.
“Am I really supposed to ignore all that?” she said.
She also said she finds it “highly problematic” that the Justice Department can’t seem to answer whether government lawyers knew about the criminal investigation against him while battling in court over his wrongful removal.
“This time, Judge Xinis was not willing to let government lawyers say, ‘We don’t really know,’” Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told reporters on Monday.
“If they want to deport him to a third country, they need to name that country, and they need to describe the process by which they’re going to give him due process,” he said.
The Supreme Court has paved the way for the Trump administration to deport immigrants to so-called third nations that aren’t their home countries after a legal battle involving a group of deportees sent to war-torn South Sudan, where attorneys said the men face torture, abuse and death.
Last week, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said he experienced “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture” at a brutal prison in El Salvador, where the Trump administration has deported dozens of alleged gang members.
Abrego Garcia must receive an opportunity to make a case before an immigration judge to explain why he shouldn’t return there or any other country where he faces risk of torture and abuse, Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
“Since day one of this case, the government’s strategy has been to send lawyers to court with no information or insufficient information,” he added. “It’s the result of a deliberate strategy not to communicate with lawyers in court.”
