GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge is for the second time ordering the Trump administration to return a Maryland man who was mistakenly sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador, blasting the U.S. government in a ruling Sunday that noted a now-suspended Justice Department lawyer admitted he didn’t know why the man was being held.
The order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis reaffirms a ruling she gave days earlier, shooting down arguments that the government can’t facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia because he is no longer in U.S. custody.
“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,” 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.”
The Justice Department has asked the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to pause Xinis’ ruling.
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national, was arrested in Maryland and deported last month despite an immigration judge’s 2019 ruling that shielded him from deportation to El Salvador, where he faced likely persecution by local gangs.
Abrego Garcia had a permit from the Department of Homeland Security to legally work in the U.S. and acknowledging that he was a sheet metal apprentice pursuing a journeyman license, his attorney said. His wife is a U.S. citizen.
The White House has described Abrego Garcia’s deportation as an “administrative error” but has also cast him an MS-13 gang member. Attorneys for Abrego Garcia said there is no evidence he was in MS-13.
In her order Sunday, Xinis referred to earlier comments from now-suspended Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni in which Reuveni said: “We concede he should not have been removed to El Salvador” and that he responded “I don’t know” when asked why Abrego Garcia was being held.
The Justice Department placed Reuveni on leave after he made the comments.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” likened Reuveni’s comments to “a defense attorney walking in, conceding something in a criminal matter.”
“That would never happen in this country,” she said. “So he’s on administrative leave now and we’ll see what happens.”
Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer and founder of Justice Connection, a network of department alumni that works to support employees, released a statement that defended Reuveni and said he has “zealously represented the United States in some of the most high-stakes and controversial immigration cases under the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.”
“Justice Department attorneys are being put in an impossible position: Obey the president, or uphold their ethical duty to the court and the Constitution,” Young said. “We should all be grateful to DOJ lawyers who choose principle over politics and the rule of law over partisan loyalty.”
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