US judge orders return of wrongly deported ‘MS-13 gang member’
A US judge ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must return to the United States within three days an alleged member of a foreign crime group who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
The ruling of Maryland US district judge Paula Xinis—who was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2015—is the latest legal setback for the administration’s hard-line deportation policies.
The United States has already acknowledged Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported in error as part of three planeloads of migrants flown out last month over alleged ties to violent gangs.
International and US media have described Garcia as a “Maryland man” and a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the United States legally with a work permit, but the Trump administration has insisted that he is an “illegal criminal.”
“This individual is an illegal criminal who broke our nation’s immigration laws. He is a leader in the brutal MS-13 gang, and he is involved in human trafficking,” White House press Sec. Karoline Leavitt said on April 1.
“And now MS-13 is a designated foreign terrorist organization. Foreign terrorists have no legal protections in the United States of America. And this administration is going to continue to deport foreign terrorists and illegal criminals from our nation’s interior,” she continued.
Deadline
Garcia has denied that he is an MS-13 member.
In a separate statement, Leavitt commented on the order of Xinis arguing that the administration had no legal authority to bring Garcia back to the country
Garcia’s lawyers however disputed that saying, “They put him there, they can bring him back,” Andrew Rossman, lawyer at prominent law firm Quinn Emanuel that joined Abrego Garcia’s legal team on Friday, said in a statement.
After questioning government lawyers, Judge Xinis ruled that the government must take steps to bring Garcia back to the United States by April 7.
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.
‘Jurisdiction’
In her reaction, Leavitt said Xinis should contact President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador “because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador.”
In a court filing on early Saturday, the US Justice Department called the judge’s order “indefensible” and urged the appeals court to immediately pause the ruling.
The United States 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.”
Earlier, at the hearing on Friday, 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 authorization 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 United States 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.
