The Division of Justice on Friday mentioned the whereabouts of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland-based Salvadoran immigrant wrongly deported to an El Salvador megaprison with a whole bunch of criminals and gang members final month, are unknown.
The admission comes after the Supreme Courtroom upheld a decrease federal court docket’s choice Thursday to facilitate Garcia’s return from the Central American jail. It additionally comes after U.S. District Choose Paula Xinis ordered the DOJ to submit extra details about Garcia following the SCOTUS ruling.
Xinis on Thursday night ordered the DOJ to file the next info no later than 9:30 a.m. on Friday: “(1) the current physical location and custodial status of Abrego Garcia; (2) what steps, if any, Defendants have taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s immediate return to the United States; and (3) what additional steps Defendants will take, and when, to facilitate his return.”
DOJ officers and AbregoGarcia’s attorneys had a listening to in federal court docket on Friday afternoon, at which level Choose Xinis repeatedly requested DOJ legal professional Drew Ensign about Garcia’s whereabouts.
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This undated photograph supplied by Murray Osorio PLLC reveals Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (Murray Osorio PLLC through AP)
“Where is he and under whose authority?” Xinis mentioned in court docket Friday.
“I do not have that information,” Ensign responded, including that Abrego Garcia is presently within the custody of Salvadoran officers and that officers didn’t present affirmation of his whereabouts previous to the Friday listening to.
“I’m not asking for state secrets. I’m asking where one man is.”
“I’m not asking for state secrets. I’m asking where one man is,” Xinis mentioned. “The government was prohibited from sending him to El Salvador, and now I’m asking a very simple question: Where is he?”
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“I do not have that information,” Ensign mentioned.
On this undated photograph supplied by the U.S. District Courtroom for the District of Maryland, a person recognized by Jennifer Vasquez Sura as her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is led by power by guards by way of the Terrorism Confinement Heart in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (U.S. District Courtroom for the District of Maryland through AP) (U.S. District Courtroom for the District of Maryland through AP)
“I am asking a very simple question. Where is he?” Xinis repeated
“I do not have any information,” Ensign mentioned once more. “I do not have plaintiffs’ assertion that he is in El Salvador under the control of that government. The government has not submitted any evidence that would be contrary to that.”
“There’s no evidence as to where he is today. And that is extremely troubling.”
Xinis additional requested if the federal government had executed something to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the USA, to which Ensign responded it was “unclear” if that they had.
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“That means they haven’t done anything,” Xinis mentioned. “Despite this court’s directive, your clients have done nothing to facilitate the return of Mr. Garcia. To say to me that you don’t have personal knowledge means that you don’t have effective contact with your clients.”
Justice Division attorneys on Friday mentioned they’re unaware of Maryland immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts after he was deported to a Salvadoran jail final month. (Fox Information)
Ensign mentioned the federal government is “evaluating what can be shared and is not yet prepared to resolve that question.”
The 2 went backwards and forwards repeatedly concerning the particulars of Abrego Garcia’s case.
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Xinis mentioned it’s “quite clear the government is playing a game with their own lawyers.”
The DOJ additionally submitted a written response within the federal case Friday stating that “[d]efendants are unable to provide the information requested by the Court on the impracticable deadline set by the Court hours after the Supreme Court issued its order.”
A jail guard transfers deportees from the U.S. to the Terrorism Confinement Heart in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on Sunday. (El Salvador presidential press workplace through AP)
“The Supreme Court’s order directs the Court to ‘clarify its directive…’ The Court has not yet clarified what it means to ‘facilitate’ or ‘effectuate’ the return as it relates to this case, as Plaintiff is in the custody of a foreign sovereign,” DOJ attorneys wrote. “Defendants request— and require—the opportunity to brief that issue prior to being subject to any compliance deadlines. Needless to say, Defendants were under no obligation to take action under the court’s order while it was administratively stayed by the Chief Justice of the United States.”
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DOJ attorneys added that the federal court docket didn’t give a ample period of time to “review the Supreme Court’s Order following the dissolution of the administrative stay in this case.”
“Defendants are not in a position where they ‘can’ share any information requested by the Court. That is the reality.”
They additional said within the court docket submitting that the DOJ defendants are reviewing SCOTUS order and “actively evaluating next steps.”
A jail officer guards a cell at most safety penitentiary CECOT (Heart for the Obligatory Housing of Terrorism) on April 4, 2025, in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. ( (Photograph by Alex Peña/Getty Photographs))
“It is unreasonable and impracticable for Defendants to reveal potential steps before those steps are reviewed, agreed upon, and vetted. Foreign affairs cannot operate on judicial timelines, in part because it involves sensitive country-specific considerations wholly inappropriate for judicial review,” Ensign and different DOJ attorneys wrote.
Federal court docket filings confirmed Abrego Garcia had fled El Salvador to flee gang violence. Beginning round 2006, gang members “stalked, hit, and threatened to kidnap and kill him in order to coerce his parents to succumb to their increasing demands for extortion.”
He entered the United States illegally in 2011 and traveled to Maryland, the place his older brother, a U.S. citizen, lived.
Round 2016, Abrego Garcia grew to become romantically concerned with a feminine U.S. citizen — Jennifer Vasquez Sura — and her two kids, additionally U.S. residents. They moved in collectively and the lady grew to become pregnant along with his baby. Abrego Garcia labored within the building trade to assist his household, court docket filings say.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the spouse of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks throughout a information convention at CASA’s Multicultural Heart in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photograph/Jose Luis Magana)
On March 28, 2019, Abrego Garcia went to a Residence Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland, to solicit employment and was recruited by three different males. Prince George County Police Division quickly arrived on the scene and detained all 4 males.
On the police station, the 4 younger males had been positioned into completely different rooms and questioned. Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was requested if he was a gang member; when he instructed police he was not, they mentioned that they didn’t consider him and repeatedly demanded that he present details about different gang members,” court documents state. “The police instructed Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that he can be launched if he cooperated, however he repeatedly defined that he didn’t have any info to offer as a result of he didn’t know something.”
A judge later granted his release, and Abrego Garcia married his now-wife in 2019. He did, however, miss the birth of his child while in federal custody, the federal complaint says.
Abrego Garcia was arrested in Baltimore on March 12 after he worked a shift as a sheet metal apprentice in Baltimore and picked up his now-5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house, the complaint says.
