State Dept. ignores order to detail return of wrongly deported migrant
The Trump administration appeared to deepen its standoff with a federal judge Saturday over the status of a man it wrongly deported to a Salvadoran prison, ignoring orders to provide a plan to return him to the United States.
A State Department official said in a two-page court filing that the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who had been living in Maryland before he was deported, was “alive and secure” in a terrorism confinement center in El Salvador.
But the official, Michael G. Kozak, provided few other details, despite an order by Judge Paula Xinis of U.S. District Court in Maryland directing the government to describe, by 5 p.m. Saturday, what steps it had taken to secure his return to the United States.
Kozak wrote that Abrego Garcia was detained “pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador,” but he did not elaborate. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is an ally of President Donald Trump and has agreed to accept deportees from the United States.
Bukele is set to meet with Trump in Washington on Monday.
The Trump administration has said that Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador on March 15 because of an “administrative error.”
On Friday, Xinis said in a hearing that she found the administration’s unwillingness to provide information about Abrego Garcia “extremely troubling.” She ordered the government to provide daily updates, beginning Saturday, detailing efforts to bring Abrego Garcia back.
The Supreme Court waded into the case Thursday, instructing the government to take steps to return Abrego Garcia. But even as the Supreme Court said that Xinis had “properly” directed the government to bring him back, it left open the possibility that courts may not have the power to require the executive branch to do so.
The Supreme Court asked Xinis to clarify her directive and said the government should “be prepared to share what it can.”
The ruling appeared to be unanimous, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote separately for the court’s three-member liberal bloc, saying that Xinis should “continue to ensure that the government lives up to its obligations to follow the law.”
On Friday, Trump said that “if the Supreme Court said, ‘Bring somebody back,’ I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court.”
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia filed their own court papers Saturday, saying that the government should be forced at a hearing Tuesday to provide witnesses from the federal government capable of offering specific details about his status.
They also wrote that the government should be required to show by Monday why it “should not be held in contempt due to its failure to comply with the court’s prior orders.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.