Lawyers for both the Trump administration and a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador will be back in court this afternoon at 4 p.m. in Greenbelt, Maryland, as the fight over his return to the US intensifies.
It is the first proceeding held by US District Judge Paula Xinis since Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele vowed yesterday to keep Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia locked in one of his country’s notorious mega-prisons and US officials made clear they wouldn’t push the leader to release him.
Earlier today, lawyers for Abrego Garcia told the judge the Trump administration is misreading a Supreme Court decision that upheld the jurist’s directive that the government “facilitate” his return.
The high court last week largely endorsed Xinis’ order that the administration work to bring Abrego Garcia back stateside, but Justice Department attorneys are pushing the argument that they understand “facilitate” to mean working to “remove any domestic obstacles” that may stand in the way of his return and not a requirement that they request Salvadoran officials to release him.
“Not so,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers wrote in a brief filing to Xinis, adding that the high court’s decision backing the lower-court order “is rendered null if construed solely to require removing ‘domestic obstacles.’”
“To give any meaning to the Supreme Court’s order, the Government should at least be required to request the release of Abrego Garcia,” they wrote. “To date, the Government has not done so.”
Over the weekend, Justice Department attorneys leaned into a part of that the Supreme Court decision that said Xinis must clarify her order in the case with “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs,” according to court papers.