A US district judge has rebuked the Trump administration for “wilful and intentional noncompliance” in a case involving a young father wrongly deported to El Salvador.
Paula Xinis previously instructed the US government to provide details about the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, a sheet metal worker from Maryland who was sent to a mega-prison in the Central American country last month.
The judge had also asked the administration to say what it was doing and what it planned to do to secure Abrego Garcia’s release and return, following its admission that he should not have been put on a plane to El Salvador in the first place.
In response to these demands, the government has so far only given “evasive” answers, Xinis said on Tuesday.
In an eight-page order, the district judge accused the government of acting in “bad faith”.
“Their answers must include facts responsive to the requests, not oblique and incomplete, non-specific characterisations,” she wrote.
Xinis criticised the government's suggestion that it could not provide detailed information because of confidentiality and national security concerns.
“Defendants have sought refuge behind vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege, using them as a shield to obstruct discovery and evade compliance with this court's orders," she said.
The judge told the government that it had until 6pm on Wednesday to submit more detailed responses and to explain its refusal to answer some questions.
Abrego Garcia is accused by the Trump administration of being a member of the MS-13 gang, a claim that he and his lawyers reject.
He arrived in the US without papers in 2011. A judge ruled in 2019 that he could not be sent back to El Salvador, his country of origin, because of the possible threat he faced there from a local gang that had targeted his family’s business.
Despite the ruling, Abrego Garcia was deported in March. Along with hundreds of other men from Latin America, he was sent to the Central American country’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Centre.
US Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who recently visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, said he is now being housed in another facility.
Days after the senator’s visit, four Democrats from the US House of Representatives travelled to El Salvador to call further attention to the young man’s plight.
The US government has claimed that it does not have the power to return Abrego Garcia, even though it is paying Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to house him and other deportees.
The Supreme Court ordered the White House earlier this month to “facilitate” his return.
