US President Donald Trump’s showdown with the judicial system will be in the spotlight Tuesday at a hearing on the fate of a migrant who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
The Trump administration admitted that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was living in the state of Maryland and married to a US citizen, was deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”
It has yet to facilitate his return despite multiple court orders.
Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network Monday that Abrego Garcia is “an MS-13 Gang Member and Foreign Terrorist from El Salvador.”
But Abrego Garcia’s family has continued to proclaim his innocence, and Judge Paula Xinis — before whom the Tuesday hearing will be held — has said she had seen no evidence Abrego Garcia was a gang member.
She has directed the government to take “all available steps to facilitate” his return “as soon as possible.”
The conservative-dominated US Supreme Court has also held that the administration was required to “facilitate” Garcia’s return and to ensure that he be treated as if he had never been wrongly deported.
Trump and his administration have repeatedly clashed with the courts since he returned to office in January, criticizing rulings that curb the president’s policies and power and attacking judges who issued them.
“No District Court Judge, or any Judge, can assume the duties of the President of the United States. Only Crime and Chaos would result,” Trump said on Truth Social last month.
Government attorneys last week rejected Xinis’s order to provide an update on Abrego Garcia’s status by Friday, saying that “foreign affairs cannot operate on judicial timelines.”
The Trump administration has since partially complied with the judge’s directives, providing a statement from a State Department official saying that Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” in the Salvadoran prison.
But it has given no information on measures taken or planned to aid his return.
The case represents the only time the administration has acknowledged wrongly deporting anyone, though the Justice Department subsequently suspended the lawyer who made that concession, saying he had failed to vigorously defend the government position.
The case has drawn significant political attention, with Chris Van Hollen, one of Maryland’s two US senators, saying he will travel to El Salvador to discuss Abrego Garcia’s release if he is not freed.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration for a second term, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele made the extraordinary offer to take in prisoners from the United States in exchange for a fee of $6 million, which the US president accepted.
Bukele on Monday, sitting next to Trump at the White House, rejected calls to repatriate Abrego Garcia, saying: “The question is preposterous…. I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
Trump meanwhile told Fox Noticias in a new interview that he would also “love” to send Americans who commit violent crimes to the notorious El Salvador mega-prison.
“I call them homegrown criminals — the ones that grew up and something went wrong and they hit people over the head with a baseball bat and push people into subways just before the train gets there,” Trump said.
