Judge demands to know if White House is helping return wrongly deported Maryland man
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to provide more information on whether it has done anything to facilitate the return of a Maryland man deported to El Salvador by mistake.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was detained and deported last month. His family sued the government to bring him back. The case has become one of the highest-profile lawsuits against President Trump's efforts to increase deportations.
MARTIN: NPR's Ximena Bustillo has been following this, and she's here with me in our studios in Washington. Good morning, Ximena.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: Could you just remind us of where we are in this case? And what exactly did Judge Xinis order the government to do?
BUSTILLO: The judge originally ordered for two items. First, for the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release and return from CECOT. This is the megaprison in El Salvador. The White House has said that his deportation was an administrative error. Second, to ensure that if he is brought back to the U.S., his immigration case receives due process within immigration courts. During Tuesday's hearing, Judge Xinis said that she had received, quote, "information" of little value on what had been done to fulfill any of this. So she granted a request from Abrego Garcia's lawyers for the government team to undergo a process called expedited discovery. This means that government officials from Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and State will be deposed under oath. She gave both sides two weeks to complete the discovery process.
MARTIN: Did the judge say why she's granting this expedited discovery process?
BUSTILLO: She said that this would be done specifically to determine whether the government is abiding by her original court order, whether they intend to abide by it and, if not, whether that's in good or bad faith.
MARTIN: How did the government respond?
BUSTILLO: The administration has so far continued to argue that it cannot force another government to extradite someone that they're holding back to the U.S. On Tuesday, Drew Ensign, the lawyer for the Justice Department, also brought up two documents. One was the status report on where the DOJ stands on bringing Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. In this, a DHS official said that Abrego Garcia could be let in through a legal port of entry, but that, if he did arrive, DHS would either move to deport him to a third country or back to El Salvador anyways.
Now, Xinis said that this was already getting too far ahead, since the government hasn't shown that it has facilitated his return at all. Ensign then pointed to the Oval Office press conference transcript from Monday, during which Trump met with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Both leaders said that they didn't have the power to return him. But to that, Xinis said that those answers that Ensign is pointing to during this press conference would not be considered responsive in a court of law.
MARTIN: So let's talk a bit about the stakes of this case. I mean, for example, what have we learned about the relationship between the president and the courts?
BUSTILLO: The takeaway from Tuesday's hearing is that this is another judge growing frustrated with the administration's answers on what it's doing in response to court orders. But the administration has, in a way, set up for many of these policy debates to take place in the courts and even make their way up to the Supreme Court, as we've seen in this case. But not every decision is going to go the administration's way. So we have continued to see that there's also a growing tension between the courts and the administration. And, you know, on Monday, in front of El Salvador's leader, Trump criticized the, quote, "liberal judges" that are blocking his agenda. This is, of course, not new, as he's previously criticized those who have issued orders against his immigration directives - especially those related to the flights to El Salvador.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Ximena Bustillo. Ximena, thank you.
BUSTILLO: Thank you.
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