The Trump administration committed a “grievous error” that “shocks the conscience” by inadvertently deporting a Salvadoran migrant to a notorious prison last month and then declaring there was little it could do to bring him back, a federal judge in Maryland said on Sunday.
The strongly worded order by the judge, Paula Xinis, served two purposes: It offered a more detailed explanation of a brief ruling she issued on Friday, demanding that the White House bring the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, back to the United States by the end of Monday. And it rejected a request by the Justice Department to pause the order as a federal appeals court considered its validity.
Over 22 pages, Judge Xinis took Trump officials to task for deporting Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on March 15 in violation of a previous court order that allowed him to stay in the United States. Administration officials then argued that neither they nor she as the judge overseeing the case had any power to retrieve him from the prison.
“As defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere,” Judge Xinis wrote. “Having confessed grievous error, the defendants now argue that this court lacks the power to hear this case, and they lack the power to order Abrego Garcia’s return.”
Moreover, Judge Xinis questioned the administration’s underlying claims that Mr. Abrego Garcia, 29, was a member of a violent transnational street gang, MS-13, which officials recently designated as a terrorist organization. The judge described those claims as being based on “a singular unsubstantiated allegation.”
“The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie,” she wrote, “and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived.”
The Trump administration has continued to defend the deportation, even after it acknowledged it had been in error. On Sunday, Attorney General Pam Bondi asserted during an appearance on Fox News that Mr. Abrego Garcia was a gang member, citing testimony from immigration agents.
Judge Xinis’s order was issued one day after top Justice Department officials put on leave the department lawyer who appeared in front of the judge on Friday and confessed that he was frustrated by the administration’s handling of the case.
The lawyer, Erez Reuveni, who was serving as the acting deputy director of the department’s immigration litigation division, was sidelined for failing to “follow a directive from your superiors,” according to a letter sent to Mr. Reuveni and obtained by The New York Times.
The Justice Department has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to pause Judge Xinis’s order requiring the administration to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States by 11:59 p.m. on Monday.
The appeals court could issue a decision as soon as Sunday evening, after Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers file court papers in support of the judge’s ruling.
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