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'Extremely troubling' that US can't provide details on mistakenly deported man, judge says

[April 12, 2025] By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, REBECCA SANTANA and BEN FINLEY

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A federal judge on Friday lambasted a government lawyer who couldn’t explain what, if anything, the Trump administration has done to arrange for the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported last month to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The U.S. government attorney also struggled to provide any information about the whereabouts of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, despite Thursday's ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that the Trump administration must bring him back.

"Where is he and under whose authority?” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis asked in a Maryland courtroom.

“I’m not asking for state secrets,” she said. “All I know is that he’s not here. The government was prohibited from sending him to El Salvador, and now I’m asking a very simple question: Where is he?”

Drew Ensign, a deputy assistant attorney general, said the government doesn't have evidence to contradict the belief that Abrego Garcia is still in El Salvador.

Xinis sounded exasperated that Ensign couldn’t tell her where Abrego Garcia is, what the government has done to arrange for his return or what more it plans to do to get him back to the U.S.

“That is extremely troubling,” she said.

The judge repeatedly asked Ensign about what has been done, asking pointedly: “Have they done anything?” — to which Ensign said he didn’t have personal knowledge of what had been done.

“So that means they’ve done nothing,” the judge said, adding later: “Despite this court’s clear directive, your clients have done nothing to facilitate the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia.”

For his part, Ensign stressed that the government was “actively considering what could be done” and said that Abrego Garcia’s case involved three Cabinet agencies and significant coordination.

Before the hearing ended, Xinis ordered the U.S. to provide daily status updates on plans to return Abrego Garcia.

“I guess my message, for what it’s worth, is: if you can do it, do it tomorrow,” she said.

In a brief filed before the hearing, Trump administration attorneys told Xinis that her deadline for information was “impractical" and that they lacked enough time to review Thursday's Supreme Court's ruling.

The U.S. attorneys also wrote that it was "unreasonable” for the U.S. government “to reveal potential steps before those steps are reviewed, agreed upon, and vetted.”

“Foreign affairs cannot operate on judicial timelines, in part because it involves sensitive country-specific considerations wholly inappropriate for judicial review,” the attorneys wrote.

After the hearing, Abrego Garcia's lawyer told reporters that "he should be here in the United States.”

Flanked by Abrego Garcia’s wife and backed by supporters, attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said he's hoping for a “meaningful” government update on Saturday.

“If they don’t take today’s order seriously, we’ll respond,” he said.

President Donald Trump indicated Friday evening that he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. If the high court's justices said to bring him back, “I would do that,” the president said.

“I have great respect for the Supreme Court,” Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One.

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This undated photo provided by CASA, an immigrant advocacy organization, in April 2025, shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (CASA via AP)

Meanwhile, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele is expected to visit Washington on Monday. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked Friday if Trump wanted Bukele to bring Abrego Garcia.

But Leavitt said Bukele is visiting to speak about the cooperation between the two countries “that is at an all-time high.”

Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said Thursday that the ordeal has been an “emotional roller coaster."

“I am anxiously waiting for Kilmar to be here in my arms, and in our home putting our children to bed, knowing this nightmare is almost at its end. I will continue fighting until my husband is home,” she said.

Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador because of persecution by local gangs, according to his immigration court records. He lived in Maryland for roughly 14 years, during which he worked in construction, married a U.S. citizen and was raising three children with disabilities.

In 2019, he was accused by local police of being in the MS-13 gang, court records state. He denied the allegation and was never charged with a crime.

A U.S. immigration judge subsequently shielded him from deportation to El Salvador because of likely gang persecution in his native country, records say. He had a federal permit to work in the U.S. and was a sheet metal apprentice, his attorney said.

The Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia to an El Salvador prison anyway, later describing the mistake as “an administrative error” but insisting that he was in MS-13. The administration also argued that the U.S. lacked the power to retrieve the Salvadoran national because he's no longer in the U.S.

But Xinis, the federal judge in Maryland, ordered the U.S. to return him, writing that his deportation appeared to be “wholly lawless.”

“There is little to no evidence to support a ‘vague, uncorroborated’ allegation that Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang,” Xinis wrote April 4.

In its ruling on Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s emergency appeal of Xinis' order.

“The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the court said in an unsigned order with no noted dissents.

The court’s liberal justices said the administration should have hastened to correct “its egregious error” and was “plainly wrong” to suggest it could not bring him home.

The Supreme Court has issued a string of rulings on its emergency docket, where the conservative majority has at least partially sided with Trump amid a wave of lower court orders slowing the president’s sweeping agenda.

In Thursday’s case, the court said Xinis’ order must be clarified to make sure it doesn’t intrude into executive branch power over foreign affairs, since Abrego Garcia is being held abroad.

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Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia. Associated Press reporters Michelle L. Price and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.

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