HYATTSVILLE, Md. (AP) — Lawyers for a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador will ask a federal judge on Friday to order the Trump Administration to return him to the U.S.
The White House already has argued against the idea in legal briefs. They have cast Kilmar Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 gang member and assert that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction over the matter because the Salvadoran national is no longer in the U.S.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have countered there is no evidence he was in MS-13. The allegation is based on a confidential informant’s claim in 2019 that Abrego Garcia was a member of a chapter in New York, where he has never lived.
Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation, described by the White House as an “administrative error,” has outraged many and raised concerns about expelling noncitizens who were granted permission to be in the U.S.
The 29-year-old had a permit from the Department of Homeland Security to legally work in the U.S., his attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said. Abrego Garcia served as a sheet metal apprentice and was pursuing his journeyman license.
Note that the argument about whether or not he is a gang member is beside the point. The White House concedes that he should not have been taken to El Salvador even if he is a gang member, but denies that the court has the authority to order the White House to make even the smallest attempt to bring him back.
The White House is saying that if they grab you and take you to a foreign country where you are imprisoned, that’s it. The courts can’t do anything. It won’t matter if you’re a law-abiding citizen or if taking you out of the USA was unambiguously against the law. Only the executive branch, the people responsible for your predicament, get to choose if and when they do anything at all to secure your freedom.
Truly chilling to think that if they black bag you, that’s it. You have no day in court.
“Mistakenly”
