Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys are pushing to keep a civil case against the Trump administration alive so they can seek sanctions against officials for allegedly violating orders to return him from El Salvador, where he was wrongly deported earlier this year.
After the government returned Abrego Garcia to the US on Friday to face federal criminal charges in Tennessee, Justice Department attorneys told US District Judge Paula Xinis that she should pause all deadlines in the civil case while they readied a formal request for her to drop the matter entirely. His return, they argued, rendered the case moot.
But his return came just two days after Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who sits on the federal bench in Maryland, gave Abrego Garcia’s attorneys permission to pursue sanctions in the case. She instructed them to make a formal request for sanctions by June 11.
The Maryland civil case was brought in late March by Abrego Garcia and his family in an effort to secure his return to the US.
“Over the past two months, the executive branch has acted not just in contempt of multiple court orders but with open defiance towards its coequal branch of government, the judiciary,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers told Xinis in a filing submitted Sunday. “Two things are now crystal clear. First, the Government has always had the ability to return Abrego Garcia, but it has simply refused to do so. Second, the Government has conducted a determined stalling campaign to stave off contempt sanctions long enough to concoct a politically face-saving exit from its own predicament.”
The attorneys said the government’s suggestion that it has now complied with Xinis’ order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return so that he can have a redo on his immigration proceedings “is pure farce,” zeroing in on the fact that he was flown to Tennessee, not Maryland, to face the criminal charges.
The federal charges — conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain — were filed in May and unsealed Friday.
“This Court continues to have a role ‘to ensure that [Abrego Garcia’s] case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,’” his attorneys wrote. “At a minimum, this case remains live to address the status of Abrego Garcia following the disposition of his criminal case given the Government’s continuing threat of removal. Even if Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States resolved every claim (it does not), this Court still retains jurisdiction to find contempt and impose sanctions.”
The government deported the father of three in mid-March, violating a 2019 court order that barred his removal to El Salvador because of fears that he would face gang violence there.
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