A federal judge in Maryland, temporarily defusing a showdown with the White House, ordered the Trump administration on Friday to provide daily updates about its progress toward returning a man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador last month.
The instructions by the judge, Paula Xinis, came at the end of a contentious day on which the Justice Department first defied her order to provide a written explanation of its plans to free the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, and then repeatedly stonewalled her efforts to get even the most basic information about him at a hearing.
By demanding that the government detail its progress and promising to track “everything the government is doing and not doing,” Judge Xinis avoided an immediate conflict with the White House. But the clashes — both inside the courtroom and over the department’s refusal to comply with her demand for a road map to release Mr. Abrego Garcia — left open the possibility of a standoff in the future.
The administration has had friction with judges in other cases — particularly those involving President Trump’s deportation policies — but the conflict with Judge Xinis was one of the most combative yet. Last week, a federal judge in Washington said there was a “fair likelihood” that the administration had violated one of his rulings ordering the White House to stop using a powerful wartime statute to deport scores of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.
The dispute involving Judge Xinis emerged directly from a Supreme Court ruling issued on Thursday evening in which the justices told Trump officials to take steps to free Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran migrant, from a notorious prison in El Salvador where he was sent with scores of other migrants on March 15.
The officials have already acknowledged that they made an “administrative error” when they put Mr. Abrego Garcia on the plane, despite a previous court order that had expressly prohibited sending him back to his homeland.
As part of its ruling, the Supreme Court told the administration that it should be prepared to “share what it can concerning the steps it has taken” to get Mr. Abrego Garcia back, as well as “the prospect of further steps” it intended to take.
During the hearing, in Federal District Court in Maryland, Judge Xinis asked Drew Ensign, a lawyer for the Justice Department, several questions about Mr. Abrego Garcia, including where he was at the moment. But Mr. Ensign largely responded by telling her that Trump officials had not simply provided him with the information she wanted.
For example, when Judge Xinis asked what the Trump administration had done so far to “facilitate” the release of Mr. Abrego Garcia, Mr. Ensign responded, “The defendants are not yet prepared to share that information.”
“That means they’ve done nothing,” Judge Xinis said.
The judge seemed frustrated when Mr. Ensign suggested that the government was prepared to respond to her request in a written filing on Tuesday.
“We’re not going to slow-walk this,” Judge Xinis said, noting that the demand for information about the government’s plans was an issue that the Supreme Court “has already put to bed.”
The tense exchanges came shortly after the Justice Department had sent Judge Xinis an aggressive two-page filing, accusing her of not giving department lawyers enough time to figure out what they planned to do about Mr. Abrego Garcia.
“Defendants are unable to provide the information requested by the court on the impracticable deadline set by the court hours after the Supreme Court issued its order,” the lawyers wrote.
“In light of the insufficient amount of time afforded to review the Supreme Court order,” they went on, “defendants are not in a position where they ‘can’ share any information requested by the court. That is the reality.”
Late Thursday, Judge Xinis, following the Supreme Court’s instructions, told the Justice Department to submit by 9:30 a.m. on Friday a written declaration of its plans in its efforts to retrieve Mr. Abrego Garcia. She also set a hearing for 1 p.m. on Friday to discuss the next steps in the case.
But shortly before 9:30 a.m., the Justice Department asked Judge Xinis to postpone the deadline for its written filing until Tuesday and push off the hearing until Wednesday. Department lawyers said they needed more time to review the Supreme Court’s order.
In an order of her own, Judge Xinis gave the government until 11:30 a.m. Friday to file a written version of its plans, but refused to change the schedule for the hearing.
Clearly frustrated, she reminded the Justice Department that the administration’s “act of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was wholly illegal from the moment it happened.”
Moreover, she said the department’s request for additional time to study a four-page Supreme Court order “blinks at reality.”
While the Supreme Court’s ruling appeared at first to be a victory for Mr. Abrego Garcia and his family, it contained a line that Trump officials could ultimately use to reiterate their position that they could not be forced to bring him back from El Salvador.
In their decision, the justices never defined what they meant by “facilitate and effectuate” his return, sending that question back to Judge Xinis to flesh out.
Indeed, the justices cautioned Judge Xinis that when she clarified the steps the White House should take, her decision needed to be made “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
In their filing on Friday, lawyers for the Justice Department said they wanted Judge Xinis to issue her clarification before they laid out what the White House planned to do to free Mr. Abrego Garcia from El Salvador.
“It is unreasonable and impracticable for defendants to reveal potential steps before those steps are reviewed, agreed upon, and vetted,” the lawyers wrote. “Foreign affairs cannot operate on judicial timelines, in part because it involves sensitive country-specific considerations wholly inappropriate for judicial review.”
Source link
