Trump officials must testify after doing ‘nothing’ to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, judge rules

Lawyers for a wrongfully deported Maryland man will be allowed to depose Trump administration officials to determine whether they complied with a Supreme Court ruling to “facilitate” his return from a brutal El Salvador prison.

“Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments,” Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis told lawyers for the government on Tuesday.

The judge is setting an expedited schedule for depositions for Department of Homeland Security and State Department officials to testify under oath about their efforts to retrieve Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the administration has repeatedly admitted in court was deported to a notorious jail in El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”

Judge Xinis will determine whether the administration is acting in “good faith” after doing “nothing” and getting “no real response” about any efforts to secure his release despite a unanimous ruling from the nation’s high court.

“There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding,” she said.

Depositions are expected to be completed by April 28.

“That said, should Defendants fail or refuse to engage in the above-described discovery in good faith, Plaintiffs are free to seek separate sanctions on an expedited basis,” Judge Xinis wrote in an order following Tuesday’s hearing.

Fast-moving and high-stakes testimony will test a case that has put Donald Trump on a crash course with the judiciary, escalating what legal scholars fear is putting the country on the brink of a constitutional crisis.

Outside the courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, Abrego Garcia’s wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura told a crowd of protesters she “will not stop fighting” until she sees her husband alive.

“Kilmar, if you can hear me, stay strong,” she said. “God hasn’t forgotten about you. Our children are asking, ‘When you will come home?’And I pray for the day to tell them the time and date you will return.”

She said she is “pleading with the Trump administration” as well as Salvadoran presidentNayib Bukele “to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar.”

“Our family is torn apart during this scary time. Our children miss their dad so much,” she said. “Enough is enough. My family can’t be robbed from another day without seeing Kilmar. This administration has already taken so much from my children, from Kilmar’s mother, brother, sisters, and me.”

Abrego Garcia — who was under a judge’s years-long withholding order that prevents his removal from the country for humanitarian reasons — was among immigrants deported to El Salvador on March 15, which the White House and government attorneys admitted was due to an “administrative error.” But the administration has refused to seek his return and instead justified his imprisonment as an alleged “leader” of MS-13 who is “involved in human trafficking” despite no evidence submitted to the court.

On April 4, Xinis ordered his immediate return. Last week, following what has become a protracted legal battle over the return of Abrego Garcia, the Supreme Court ordered the administration to “facilitate” his “release from custody in El Salvador,” which the justices appeared to agree was “illegal.”

Xinis then ordered the administration to provide daily updates on his condition and what steps, if any, officials were taking to “facilitate” his return. But officials have balked. In their replies to the court, hey argue that the administration can’t “forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation” and pointed to remarks from Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who told reporters at the White House on April 14 that he has no plans to release him.

Now, lawyers for Abrego Garcia will be able to depose at least four government officials who have already submitted sworn statements about Abrego Garcia’s status to get those answers.

That includes ICE officials Robert L. Cerna and Evan C. Katz, State Department official Michael G. Kozak, and Homeland Security’s acting general counsel Joseph N. Mazzara, the Department of Homeland Security’s acting general counsel.

Moments before Tuesday’s hearing, Mazzara wrote to the court that Homeland Security is “prepared to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s presence in the United States in accordance with those processes if he presents at a port of entry.”

DHS will then detain him and “either remove him to a third country or terminate his withholding of removal” and then send him back to El Salvador, he wrote.

Judge Xinis said that the government’s use of “facilitate … flies in the face of the plain meaning of the word.”