A federal judge accused the Trump administration Tuesday of intentionally flouting her order to provide details about the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said the administration is attempting to “obstruct” efforts to unearth details about Abrego Garcia’s improper deportation to El Salvador and had provided “vague” and “evasive” answers to court-ordered inquiries as part of an ongoing lawsuit.
The White House has refused to answer questions about how it concluded that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang or which officials were involved in his deportation and continued imprisonment, Xinis wrote in an eight-page order Tuesday.
The government has also refused to answer questions about its contract with the Salvadoran government, and which Salvadoran officials U.S. officials have been communicating with about Abrego Garcia’s return, the judge wrote.
The administration’s refusal to provide information comes after Xinis last week ordered an “intense” two-week inquiry into the Trump administration’s efforts. She initiated the discovery period after finding unsatisfactory the administration’s initial responses to her requests for updates in Abrego Garcia’s case.
“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance,” Xinis wrote in her new order.
Xinis also accused the administration of mischaracterizing the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this month requiring the administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from El Salvador’s custody.
“That Order made clear that this Court ‘properly required the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador,’” Xinis wrote.
The Trump administration’s position has shifted somewhat as the litigation has progressed. Last week, Justice Department lawyers argued that court orders — including a Supreme Court directive — that the U.S. government facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release only obligated the U.S. to remove “domestic barriers” to his return.
However, following an appeals court ruling, the administration says it has taken additional steps, according to a court filing early Tuesday. Government lawyers remained cagey about the specifics, invoking a variety of legal confidentiality protections, including attorney-client privilege, deliberative process privilege and the state secrets privilege.
“The State Department has engaged in appropriate diplomatic discussions with El Salvador regarding Abrego Garcia,” Justice Department lawyers wrote. “However, disclosing the details of any diplomatic discussions regarding Mr. Abrego Garcia at this time could negatively impact any outcome.”
The legal battle is playing out amid an increasingly pitched political fight over Abrego Garcia’s fate. Several members of Congress have traveled to El Salvador and accused the Trump administration of defying court orders intended to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Meanwhile, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, proposed over the weekend a plan to deliver some U.S. deportees to Venezuela in exchange for the release of political prisoners.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native, came to the United States illegally in 2011 and had been living in Maryland in recent years. In 2019, immigration courts denied his claim for asylum because he filed it too late, but a judge agreed to block the U.S. government from sending him to his home country because of a fear of persecution by a local gang. That order was still in effect when the administration loaded Abrego Garcia onto a plane last month and shipped him to El Salvador along with hundreds of other U.S. deportees.
The administration has repeatedly acknowledged the error in court and elsewhere, despite conflicting statements from some White House officials in recent days.
Xinis ordered the government to provide fuller responses to some questions by 6 p.m. on Wednesday, and explain why providing answers to other questions would raise confidentiality or national security concerns. She gave Abrego Garcia’s lawyers until 8 p.m. Tuesday to reformulate some of the questions they’ve posed to the government.
Her order came just after the Trump administration filed its latest daily update on its efforts to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Tuesday’s update, for the first time, was filed under seal, available only for the judge’s review.
The tussle over the written exchange of questions and answers came as lawyers were scheduled to be conducting live questioning of relevant witnesses under oath in depositions as part of the same fact-finding process.
The acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, Joseph Mazzara, was set to be deposed Tuesday morning, with at least one other deposition set for Wednesday, according to a report filed with Xinis early Tuesday.
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