The judge presiding over the case of a man who was mistakenly deported by the U.S. government to a prison in El Salvador suggested Tuesday that she was weighing contempt proceedings against the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered administration officials to turn over evidence of their efforts to secure the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. since she first ordered his return, saying the government had shown her “nothing” to date.
Attorneys for Abrego Garcia had asked that the administration be found in contempt of court over its inaction. The judge said she wants to review the evidence the administration submits, which is expected to include sworn depositions, before ruling on the matter.
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Speaking for the administration, Drew Ensign of the Justice Department said the government had complied with the judge’s orders. He also said that if Abrego Garcia were to show up at a port of entry, we “would facilitate his return” into the U.S. before taking him into custody.
Abrego Garcia was deported on March 15 and taken to a notorious prison in El Salvador, despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order barring him from being sent to his home country. Government lawyers have said he was taken there as the result of an “administrative error.”
Xinis previously ordered the administration to try to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., where he could be given due process.
During an Oval Office meeting Monday between President Donald Trump and President Nayib Bukele, the Salvadoran president told a reporter that he wouldn’t send Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., calling the question “preposterous.”
None of the U.S. officials present at the meeting publicly asked that he be returned, something the judge pointed to Tuesday when Ensign tried to use the meeting as evidence of the U.S. government’s efforts to comply with her earlier order.
Xinis pointed out that a reporter had asked Bukele the question, and that administration officials didn’t respond to questions about what steps they’d taken to secure Abrego Garcia’s return.
Ahead of Monday’s Oval Office meeting, Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, denied any mistake was made in deporting Abrego Garcia and argued he was able to be legally removed because he’s a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which Trump has labeled a foreign terrorist organization.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia have denied that he’s a gang member, and Xinis has questioned the evidence the immigration judge used years earlier to make that determination. She noted in a ruling that he has no criminal record in the U.S. or El Salvador, and that the “‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived.”
The White House, however, has doubled down on those allegations, without providing any evidence to support the claims.
“Abrego Garcia was a foreign terrorist. He is an MS-13 gang member. He was engaged in human trafficking. He illegally came into our country, and so deporting him back to El Salvador was always going to be the end result,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week.
Abrejo Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, offered a different view of her husband, who she said had “dedicated himself to making our family’s American dream come true.”
She urged her husband to stay strong before the hearing, which she attended.
“Kilmer, if you can hear me, stay strong. God hasn’t forgotten about you. Our children are asking, when would you come home? And I pray for the day,” she said Tuesday.
