A judge ruled on Friday that the Trump presidency must gain a Peruvian nationwide, whom it falsely deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, back to the United States not later than Monday evening.
Judge Paula Xinis, a federal prosecutor in Maryland, said in an attempt that Trump representatives violated immigration laws by deporting Kilmar Abrego-Garcia along with more than 250 reported Cuban and Salvadoran gang members on March 15.
The Department of Justice, which has been defending Trump’s violent and fascinating deportation strategy in numerous court cases, had argued to Xinis that the error was inevitable because the U. S. has no authority over another country’s prison.
The White House said the administration had evidence that Abrego-Garcia was allegedly a member of the MS-13 gang and that the error was, therefore, trivial because he belonged behind bars.
According to court records, Abrego-Garcia was previously detained in 2019, and an immigration judge found at the time that the Department of Homeland Security’s allegation that Abrego-Garcia was in MS-13 came from a reliable source.
Abrego-Garcia, a sheet metal worker who entered the U. S. illegally around 2012, was living in Maryland with his wife and children and had no criminal convictions or charges on his record when he was abruptly arrested on March 12 and deported days later, without any due process, to a terrorism confinement center in El Salvador known as CECOT.
A separate immigration judge found that Abrego-Garcia had also made a credible case that his life would be in danger if he were deported back to his home country. That judge released him from custody months after he was detained in 2019 and issued an order that barred the government from deporting him to El Salvador.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT MARYLAND MAN’S DEPORTATION TO SALVADORAN MEGAPRISON
Abrego-Garcia’s attorney acknowledged in court filings that his client could certainly be entered into removal proceedings through routine protocols and that he was entitled under immigration law to appear before an immigration judge as part of that process.
Xinis’s order was issued on an emergency basis, and the DOJ could attempt to reverse her order before the Monday deadline to return Abrego-Garcia. A DOJ spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
