The Trump administration has until Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET to return a man it mistakenly deported to El Salvador to the United States, a federal judge reiterated on Sunday.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis set the deadline for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia for Monday, prompting the Justice Department to ask the judge for a delay while the administration appealed her order. Xinis denied the request, leaving the Monday deadline in place, NBC News reported.
Abrego Garcia, 29, a Salvadoran man who was living in Maryland, was arrested by federal agents on March 12 and sent to El Salvador on one of the Trump administration’s deportation flights. Based on a judge’s order in 2019, however, the United States was barred from deporting Abrego Garcia back to his home country, acknowledging that he would likely face persecution or torture.
Judge Xinis wrote on Sunday that the federal government arrested the Salvadoran “without any lawful authority” and handed him over to “his persecutors.”
“Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or office; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador,” the judge wrote. “Once there, U.S. officials secured his detention in a facility that, by design, deprives its detainees of adequate food, water, and shelter, fosters routine violence; and places him with his persecutors.”
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Attorney General Pam Bondi defended the deportation of Abrego Garcia, saying, “We have to rely on what ICE says. We have to rely on what Homeland Security says. They’re our clients, and I firmly believe in the work they are doing, and we’re going to make America safe again. That was President Trump’s directive to all of us.”
After Abrego Garcia was deported, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official admitted that he was mistakenly sent to El Salvador through an “administrative error.”
“This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13,” ICE official Robert L. Cerna wrote to a federal judge.
The Trump administration has said that it cannot bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States since he is already in Salvadoran custody. The administration has been sending suspected violent, illegal immigrants to El Salvador to be held in an infamous Salvadoran prison.
In 2019, the Department of Homeland Security charged Abrego Garcia with illegally residing in the United States. During his proceedings, the immigration judge denied him bond “because ‘the evidence show[ed] that he is a verified member of [Mara Salvatrucha] (‘MS-13’)]’ and therefore posed a danger to the community,” according to ICE’s statement to the court. While the judge ordered Abrego Garcia’s removal, he stipulated that he could not be sent back to El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia has resided in the United States since 2011 and is married to a U.S. citizen. Federal agents reportedly arrested him in an Ikea parking lot while his 5-year-old autistic son was in the backseat of his vehicle.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to questions about the deportation last week, acknowledging that Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador by mistake, but adding that he “will not be returning to our country.” Leavitt said that the White House “maintains” that Abrego Garcia “was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang” and alleged that he was involved in human trafficking.
