GREENBELT, Maryland — An exasperated federal judge commanded the Trump administration Friday to begin providing “daily updates” on whether it is doing anything to comply with her order to return a Maryland man — illegally deported to El Salvador last month — back to the United States.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis scolded the administration for refusing to provide even “basic” details about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s location, despite her demand for an update by Friday morning.
Whereabouts Unknown
“I’m asking a very simple question. Where is he?” Xinis asked Justice Department attorneys at a court hearing.
“I do not have that information,” replied Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign.
The administration’s stonewalling, which Xinis described as “extremely troubling,” raised the specter that it is defying the order that the judge issued last week and that the Supreme Court largely upheld on Thursday.
Concerns and Consequences
Xinis, an Obama appointee, said that without any information — or even an acknowledgment that the administration had done anything at all — she could only conclude that the administration had “done nothing to facilitate the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia.”
“There’s an easy way to combat that,” she said, “and that’s just to tell me whether you’ve done anything and if so, what.”
Xinis’ new directive requires the daily updates to come from an administration official with “personal knowledge” of efforts to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. But Justice Department officials said they may not be prepared to comply with her demands until at least Monday.
Legal Timeline
Xinis first ordered the administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia on April 4. The judge noted Friday that her order was in effect for three days before Chief Justice John Roberts paused it on Monday to give the justices time to weigh the matter. And Roberts’ pause ended Thursday night when the Supreme Court upheld the part of her order requiring the administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
The Trump administration has acknowledged that immigration officials wrongly deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on March 15, in violation of a 2019 immigration court order that barred his deportation to that country because of a credible fear of persecution by a local gang. He was taken with other deportees to a notorious anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador.
Trump White House officials have labeled Abrego Garcia a member of the violent gang MS-13, citing an immigration judge’s ruling in 2019 that he was likely a member of the organization. The assessment by the immigration judge was rooted in a tip from a local police informant. Abrego Garcia has long denied any gang affiliations.
National Attention
His case skyrocketed to national attention amid efforts by President Donald Trump to hastily deport hundreds of foreign nationals that he labeled members of terrorist groups or foreign gangs, at times deploying rarely used war powers to speed up the effort. The Supreme Court has ordered the administration twice in the last week to provide meaningful due process to those it is seeking to summarily deport, including Abrego Garcia.
Despite the justices’ ruling in Abrego Garcia’s case, the White House continued to attack Xinis late Thursday and Friday and cast the Supreme Court’s decision as a victory for the administration. And when Xinis ordered a quick turnaround on her demand for information, the administration accused her of making “unreasonable and impracticable” demands.
Ensign, notably, was the same attorney who found himself under the glare of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg after the administration declined to abide by his order to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador on March 15, hours before Abrego Garcia’s deportation.
Ensign told Boasberg that despite the judge’s demand for information about deportations Trump was planning under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, other administration officials had not provided him any — even while the planes were in the air. The DOJ lawyer took a similar stance at Friday’s hearing before Xinis.
Xinis told Ensign that if Trump administration officials were depriving him of information she demanded, then “you don’t have full and effective contact with your clients.”
