A federal court in Maryland Friday ordered the Trump administration to take immediate steps to return a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran mega-prison (previous coverage available here).
Abrego Garcia was arrested and deported last month — despite having been granted protection by an immigration judge in 2019 that should have prevented him from being deported to El Salvador. He had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, all U.S. citizens.
"This was an illegal act," the federal court told Justice Department lawyers at a federal court hearing about the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who lived in the U.S. legally and had a work permit.
The court asked Reuveni to explain why Abrego Garcia was arrested last month. But Reuveni said he didn't know. The Justice Department admits that Abrego Garcia was deported because of an administrative error.
"I would ask the court to give us the defendants one more chance to do this" without an order from the court, Erez Reuveni, a lawyer for the Justice Department asked at the end of the hearing. The court rejected that request.
The court ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, April 7. She said keeping him in El Salvador constitutes irreparable harm.
"From the moment he was seized, it was unconstitutional," the court said during the hearing. "If there isn't a document, a warrant, a statement of probable cause, then there is no basis to have seized him in the first place."