(Reuters) – The Trump administration is facing a Monday deadline to comply with a court order to return to the United States a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador, although the administration has asked an appeals court to intervene.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis directed the United States to return the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, by the end of Monday. The Trump administration asked the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to block the judge’s order.
Xinis had found the United States had no lawful authority to detain and deport Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the U.S legally with a work permit, and ordered his return by 11:59 p.m. on Monday.
Xinis said in her written decision issued on Sunday that “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal.” She called the removal of Abrego Garcia “wholly lawless.”
The Trump administration has faced criticism in U.S. courts and elsewhere over its stepped-up immigration enforcement. A judge in Washington, D.C. is weighing whether the Trump administration violated a court order not to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.
The United States has conceded the deportation of Abrego Garcia was done in error, but said it was powerless to compel El Salvador to return him.
The government told the appeals court that 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.”
The White House and administration officials have accused Abrego Garcia of being a criminal gang member, but there are no pending charges. His lawyers have denied the allegation.
Xinis had found that an order from an immigration judge in 2019 prohibiting Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador, his home country, was still in place.
Abrego Garcia was stopped and detained by ICE officers on March 12 and questioned about his alleged gang affiliation.
Abrego Garcia had complied fully with all directives from immigration officials, including annual check-ins, and had never been charged with or convicted of any crime, the judge wrote.
He has been detained in El Salvador at what the judge called “one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere.”
Comments