Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Judge orders feds to testify on deportation plan "chaos"

Prosecutors would not reveal where or when Abrego might be deported if released from jail on July 16

Kilmar Abrego Garcia at CECOT, circled in red (Photo from court documents)

Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case poses a question of profound significance to the country: Can the government spirit a man out of the country in violation of a court order, charge him with serious crimes, and try to make him vanish once again when he tries to defend himself?

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GREENBELT, Md. (ARN) — Visibly frustrated about the “chaos” of the government’s making, a federal judge on Monday ordered the Department of Justice to produce witnesses about their plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia if he is released.

“I just don’t believe for a second that the defendants don’t know what they’re going to do on July 16th if he is released,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said in court today.

Judge Xinis pressed Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn repeatedly, and fruitlessly, for information about where and when Abrego would be deported if released.

“As an officer of the court, I am directing you to answer,” Xinis told him at one point.

“We will detain him for removal,” said Guynn, who called any information about Abrego’s possible final destination “speculative.”

“You see, I don’t believe that for a second,” Xinis shot back.

A long history backs up the judge’s skepticism.

In March, the government arrested Abrego without a warrant and spirited him out of the country without notice or a hearing. Abrego spent the ensuing three months in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), which Xinis described as “one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western hemisphere.” The Supreme Court found Abrego’s deportation illegal, ordering the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return.

Six days before indicting Abrego under seal in Nashville, Tenn., the Justice Department claimed in civil court in Maryland that they had no power to force El Salvador to return him to the United States. Xinis called the government’s statements in court “illogical” and “highly problematic.”

(Today, during separate legal proceedings, it came to light that the government of El Salvador took the opposite position before the United Nations, insisting that they were not responsible for the men summarily expelled from the United States to CECOT because these men were transferred pursuant to “a bilateral cooperation mechanism with another state.”)

In June, the United States unsealed Abrego’s indictment and returned him to the United States to face charges of smuggling immigrants. After losing a motion to keep him detained before trial, prosecutors said that immigration authorities would try to deport Abrego once again if he were released on bail. Abrego’s lawyers today urged Judge Xinis not to let that happen.

Guynn made clear that the government would not wait for trial to try to deport Abrego, whose attorneys now want the judge to order the restoration of the “status quo ante.”

That would mean returning Abrego to Maryland pending trial, with due process protections in place if the government wants to seek his deportation first.

Though she emphasized that she had no power to stop the government from pursuing deportation, Judge Xinis seemed open to some form of relief: “I just need to assure that you’re doing it lawfully,” she said.

Judge Xinis denied the government’s motions to dismiss the case today, finding that she still retained jurisdiction to resolve the case’s unanswered questions. One of those questions, which was not addressed in court today, was whether the government should be sanctioned for violating her prior orders.

Throughout the roughly three-hour proceedings, Xinis routinely reminded the Justice Department attorneys that they were “officers of the court” and picked apart the inconsistencies in their statements. Former Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni previously conceded that Abrego’s deportation was an “administrative error” — and was subsequently fired for the admission. Other government attorneys subsequently denied the error.

Today, the Justice Department’s latest attorney Bridget O’Hickey admitted the “error” once again.

Judge Xinis exclaimed: “I have been told by lawyers representing the defendants that there was no error.”

At one point, O’Hickey also appeared to deny that the criminal investigation against Abrego started on April 28, but the judge noted that a federal agent testified in court proceedings in Nashville that it did, in fact, launch on that date. O’Hickey ultimately conceded that she had no knowledge about that issue.

Abrego’s wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura sat with her husband’s lawyers throughout the proceedings, and she has been a regular presence in civil and criminal court.

During the hearing, Abrego’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said that his legal team was not even informed that their client was coming back to the United States.

“Your honor, we learned [of his return] on ABC News,” he said.

Sandoval-Moshenberg continued to denounce the government’s lack of transparency at a press conference outside the courthouse.

“The last time that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was put on an airplane, he did not know where that plane was flying to until it landed at the airport in El Salvador,” Sandoval told reporters. “What we’re trying to do here is make sure that doesn’t happen a second time.”

(Watch the attorney’s statement below)

Before today’s hearing, Abrego filed a proposed amended lawsuit saying that he was tortured in that prison, known as CECOT. He said that guards there greeted him and the other new inmates with: “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.” He described being “forced to strip, issued prison clothing, and subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster.”

“His head was shaved with a zero razor, and he was frog-marched to cell 15, being struck with wooden batons along the way,” Abrego’s attorneys wrote in court papers, adding the beatings left “visible bruises and lumps all over his body.”

The Trump administration must produce an official with knowledge of the government’s plans for Garcia if he is released at a hearing this Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern Time.