By Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to deport migrant Kilmar Abrego for a second time, but does not plan to send him back to El Salvador, where he was wrongly deported in March, a lawyer for the administration told a judge on Thursday.
It is not clear when the deportation might occur or whether it would happen before the criminal case accusing him of smuggling migrants into the United States is complete.
Justice Department lawyer Jonathan Guynn said during a hearing in federal court in Maryland that the United States does not have “imminent plans” to remove Abrego from the United States.
If deported, Abrego would be sent to a third country and not El Salvador, Guynn said. He did not name the country.
Abrego, a Salvadoran national, was deported and imprisoned in El Salvador in March despite a 2019 judicial decision barring him from being sent there because of a risk of persecution.
The Trump administration brought Abrego back to the United States this month to face federal criminal charges accusing him of transporting migrants living illegally in the United States. He has pleaded not guilty.
The case of Abrego, 29, who had been living in Maryland with his U.S. citizen wife and their young son, has become a flashpoint over Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.
The federal judge overseeing Abrego’s criminal case has ordered him released ahead of trial as early as Friday, but the Trump administration has said it plans to immediately take him into immigration custody.
His fate would then be unclear. Abrego’s lawyers have asked that Abrego be kept in Maryland and that the Justice Department, which is prosecuting the criminal case, and the Department of Homeland Security, which handles immigration proceedings, ensure he is not deported while the criminal case remains pending.
Federal judges in Maryland, where Abrego is suing over the March deportation, and Tennessee, where criminal charges were filed, are both yet to rule on Abrego’s requests.
Robert McGuire, the top federal prosecutor in Nashville, Tennessee, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes at a hearing in the criminal case on Wednesday that he would coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security as best as he could but ultimately could not control their decisions about where to house Abrego and whether to deport him.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Additional reporting by Luc Cohen; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis)
