GREENBELT, Maryland — A federal judge ordered an “intense” two-week inquiry into the Trump administration’s refusal to seek the return of a man who was wrongly deported from Maryland to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
“To date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said at a court hearing Tuesday.
Xinis’ order sets up a high-stakes sprint that may force senior Trump administration officials to testify under oath about their response to court orders requiring them to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. Each day that passes, the judge noted, is another day Abrego Garcia spends improperly detained in a maximum security mega-prison.
“We’re going to move. There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding,” the judge said. “There are no business hours while we do this. … Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments. I’m usually pretty good about things like that in my court, but not this time. So, I expect all hands on deck.”
Xinis’ inquiry is the latest chapter in an escalating clash between the executive and judicial branches over Abrego Garcia’s illegal deportation last month. Xinis previously ordered the administration to “facilitate” his release from the custody of El Salvador, and the Supreme Court upheld that directive last week.
Immigration and homeland security officials have acknowledged that they sent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador erroneously — in violation of a 2019 court order that barred the government from deporting him there because of the risk that he could be targeted by a local gang. But the administration has apparently taken no concrete steps to bring him back. Instead, Trump administration officials have claimed they have no power to do so now that he is under the jurisdiction of El Salvador.
Xinis called that refusal “stunning” even as she agreed there is a legitimate legal debate about her own power to order U.S. officials to make a direct request to their Salvadoran counterparts.
Xinis said she anticipates that four senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State will now have to sit for depositions — essentially out-of-court interviews in which the officials will have to answer questions under oath from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers. Those officials include Joseph Mazzara, the acting general counsel at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Michael Kozak, the senior bureau official in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.
Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign argued that a joint appearance in the Oval Office Monday by President Donald Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador demonstrated that the issue had been raised with “the highest authority” in that country and there was no hope of getting Abrego Garcia back.
