Lawyers for wrongly deported man ask judge for U.S. contempt hearing

Lawyers for a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador asked a federal judge on Saturday to order the Justice Department to show by 10 a.m. Monday why it should not be held in contempt for failing to say what it has done or will do to immediately return him to the United States after a Supreme Court order.

In a Justice Department filing at 5 p.m. Saturday, U.S. State Department official Michael G. Kozak confirmed that 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego García is being held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center under that country’s sovereign authority. However, the government did not update U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Greenbelt about what concrete steps it is taking to bring him home as she had ordered Friday.

Abrego García’s legal team wrote that the limited response was the latest sign of the government’s lack of urgency and failure to comply with her April 4 order for it to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody, a decision the Supreme Court upheld 9-0 Thursday evening.

Attorney Jonathan G. Cooper in a written motion asked Xinis to order the government to take “whatever … steps are within its power” to aid Abrego García’s release, including sending personnel to ensure his safe passage, flight and reentry to the United States. Cooper also asked the judge to order the government to disclose by the end of Monday the terms of its use of the maximum security detention facility in El Salvador to house deportees, whether it has informed prison officials that it wants Abrego García’s returned, and what else it has done or will do.

Cooper further asked Xinis to order the government to show by Monday morning why it should not be found in contempt for violating the judge’s earlier orders to lay out its actions to repatriate Abrego García, a sheet metal apprentice and father of three who is married to a U.S. citizen.

Xinis did not immediately respond to the request. At a hearing Friday, U.S. Justice Department attorneys said it was “impracticable” to meet Xinis’s initial 9:30 a.m. Friday deadline for an update, asking for an extension until 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Xinis balked, leading to a testy hearing in which government attorney Drew C. Ensign said he had little new information and Xinis eventually told the parties to file a written update at 5 p.m. daily.

Abrego García fled El Salvador as a teen after the Barrio 18 gang there attempted to extort his mother, who owned a pupusa shop in their small town, then tried to recruit him, his lawyers say. A U.S. immigration judge in 2019 found that Abrego García had shown he is at risk of harm or death in El Salvador, and prohibited his removal.

Xinis has said that there is no evidence Abrego García is a gang member, despite allegations from the Trump administration that he is part of MS-13’s “Western” clique in New York — a place, the judge noted in an earlier ruling, he has never lived.

Abrego García was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and expelled alongside more than 200 people to El Salvador on March 15, despite the 2019 court order.

The Trump administration, which said it paid about $6 million to El Salvador for the detention of the deportees, has said it cannot remove Abrego García because he is now in the custody of a foreign government. Abrego García’s lawyers have said he “sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafkaesque mistake.”

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• Steve Thompson, Katie Mettler and Victoria Bisset contributed.