Denying the Justice Department’s request to detain the deportee would be a significant rebuke of the Trump administration, which has repeatedly cast him as a dangerous criminal.
Protesters gathered on Friday outside the federal courthouse in Nashville where Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was being arraigned after his return from El Salvador.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked the judge in the case to appoint a special master to investigate the failure by Trump officials to comply with her instructions.
The prison in Santa Ana, El Salvador, where Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is believed to have been held. The White House suddenly changed course last Friday and brought him back to face indictment.
The request came as lawyers in Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s separate civil case were poised to ask a different judge to hold the Trump administration in contempt for sidestepping one of her orders.
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, in Nashville, where Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia faces criminal charges of transporting undocumented immigrants.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s lawyers accused the Trump administration of spending months “engaged in an elaborate, all-of-government effort to defy court orders.”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, was flown back to the United States on Friday to face federal criminal charges. Devlin Barrett, who covers the Justice Department, explains the charges and what may come next for Garcia.
Three months after being wrongly deported to El Salvador, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was flown back to the United States on Friday to face federal charges.
For the nearly three months before the Justice Department secured an indictment against the man, it had repeatedly flouted a series of court orders to “facilitate” his release from El Salvador.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland and legally protected from deportation, had been held in a Salvadoran prison since March 15.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland and legally protected from deportation, had been held in a Salvadoran prison since March 15.
The Trump administration obeyed the instructions of the judge in the case, a significant departure from the defiant stance it has staked out in other immigration matters.
A federal judge found that the Trump administration had violated an order barring officials from deporting immigrants to countries not their own without first giving them a “meaningful opportunity” to contest their removal.
Administration officials have either violated orders or used an array of obfuscations and delays to prevent federal judges from deciding whether violations took place.
The entrance to the Salvadoran prison where Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is being held. The tensions between the court and the Trump administration over the case could soon come to a head.
Connexion
