A federal court refused the Justice Department\u2019s petitions to dismiss Kilmar Abrego Garcia\u2019s lawsuit over his erroneous deportation to El Salvador, finding one of the motions \u201cmeritless.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee, did not immediately decide on Abrego Garcia\u2019s request to be transferred to a federal prison in Maryland while awaiting his criminal trial in Tennessee on human trafficking accusations.<\/p>\n
Xinis informed Justice Department attorney Bridget O\u2019Hickey, \u201cYou made three arguments, defendants, and none are availing \u2026 meritless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Xinis, who had directed the government to assist Abrego Garcia\u2019s return to the United States after he was deported to El Salvador in March, questioned O\u2019Hickey on whether the US had indicted him to facilitate his return. When Xinis arrived in the United States in June and was promptly charged, the government did not contact his or Abrego Garcia\u2019s counsel.<\/p>\n
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native, was one of over 250 Venezuelan and Salvadoran males deported from the United States to El Salvador and incarcerated in CECOT, a maximum-security prison, in mid-March.<\/p>\n
Soon after, he sued the government over his deportation. His updated lawsuit requests that Xinis be kept in Maryland rather than Tennessee, where he is now incarcerated, and that his deportation be halted.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously you did have power to produce Mr. Abrego because you produced him less than a week later.\u201d Xinis told the government, citing the May 21 date of a sealed indictment against Abrego Garcia in Tennessee filed six days after a motion in Maryland that said the government had no power to return him to the U.S.<\/p>\n
Xinis said it as \u201chighly problematic\u201d that the government planned to investigate Abrego Garcia and bring him back for trial without alerting her court. \u201cWe knew it was coming because eventually it was unsealed,\u201d she told me. Abrego Garcia\u2019s attorneys informed Xinis that they learned of his return to the United States via press reports.<\/p>\n
Abrego Garcia was brought to the United States in June and promptly charged on human trafficking charges in Tennessee stemming from a traffic stop in 2019. He is being imprisoned in Tennessee awaiting trial.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Hickey argued that Abrego Garcia\u2019s complaint should be dismissed, noting that the government was in continuous talks with El Salvador to send him back to the United States at the same time the Justice Department filed its petition to dismiss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"