A federal judge has issued a scathing rebuke to the Trump administration’s efforts to block an order requiring the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a protected Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in a 22-page opinion released Sunday, stood by her initial order demanding Garcia’s return, rejecting the Justice Department’s emergency stay request filed with both the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and the lower court.
Garcia, a Venezuelan migrant granted legal protection in the U.S., was wrongly deported on March 15 under an 18th-century wartime law, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. He is currently being held in a notorious Salvadoran prison, where conditions are considered dangerous due to gang violence. Xinis ordered the Department of Homeland Security and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to facilitate Garcia’s return by 11:59 p.m. on April 7, 2025.
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“Abrego Garcia will suffer irreparably were he not accorded his requested relief,” Xinis wrote. “The risk of harm shocks the conscience. Defendants have forcibly put him in a facility that intentionally mixes rival gang members without any regard for protecting the detainees from harm at the hands of the gangs.”
Despite this, DOJ attorneys argued in court filings that the order was “indefensible” and claimed that the U.S. had no authority to compel El Salvador to release Garcia. “Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is presently being held in El Salvador by the El Salvadoran Government. The United States does not have control over Abrego Garcia. Or the sovereign nation of El Salvador,” they wrote.
Xinis dismissed this argument, pointing out the administration’s failure to justify Garcia’s deportation. “That silence is telling,” she said. “As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere.”
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She also highlighted that the administration claimed, without evidence, that Garcia was affiliated with MS-13. Ironically, Garcia is currently imprisoned with members of MS-13’s rival gang, Barrio 18—one of the very threats that led to his original flight from El Salvador, per ABC News.
“In the end, Defendants’ redressability argument rings hollow,” Xinis concluded. “As their counsel suggested at the hearing, this is not about Defendants’ inability to return Abrego Garcia, but their lack of desire.” Attempts by Law&Crime to obtain comment from the DOJ on Sunday were unsuccessful, and Garcia’s current custody status in El Salvador remains unclear.
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