Judge calls Justice Department’s motion to dismiss Kilmar Abrego Garcia's lawsuit 'meritless'

By Darren Lyn

HOUSTON, United States (AA) - A federal judge on Monday denied the US Department of Justice's (DOJ) motion to dismiss Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit over his mistaken deportation to El Salvador.

US District Judge Paula Xinis told DOJ attorneys that their request was "meritless."

"You made three arguments, defendants, and none are availing," Xinis said in court.

Abrego Garcia was deported to an El Salvador prison in March after a nationwide raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that led to the arrest and deportation of nearly 200 alleged Salvadoran and Venezuelan gang members.

"The last time that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was put on an airplane, he did not know where that airplane was flying to until it landed at the airport in El Salvador," said Abrego Garcia's attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg at a news conference. "What we're trying to do here is to make sure that that doesn't happen again a second time."

Judge Xinis, however, did not immediately rule on Abrego Garcia's motion to be moved to federal custody in the state of Maryland pending his human trafficking trial in Tennessee.

Xinis, who had ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the US from El Salvador, questioned the government about whether they had indicted Abrego Garcia in order to facilitate his June return to the US without notifying the court or Abrego Garcia's attorneys.

"Obviously you did have power to produce Mr. Abrego because you produced him less than a week later," Xinis told the government, saying that it was "highly problematic" that there had been a plan by the government to investigate Abrego Garcia and bring him back for prosecution without informing her, adding that she found out about his return from US news reports.

Despite the judge's denial of the Justice Department's motion to dismiss Abrego Garcia's lawsuit, the Trump administration said Monday that it would take steps to deport Abrego Garcia if he is released from criminal custody before his human trafficking trial in Tennessee, which could begin as early as next week.

Xinis has ordered additional testimony from the government on Thursday regarding the DOJ's plans to deport Abrego Garcia if he is released from detention.

"It's like trying to nail Jello to a wall trying to find out what is going to happen next week," said Xinis, emphasizing that it is within her jurisdiction to ensure that Abrego Garcia is "not spirited away again" to another country without due process.

DOJ attorney Jonathan Guynn answered by saying that the government's handling of Abrego Garcia's deportation would be no different than removing any undocumented immigrant from the US.

"There's no intention to just put him into limbo in ICE custody while we wait for the criminal case to unfold," said Guynn. "He will be removed, as would any other illegal alien in that process."

Abrego Garcia's attorney said if the government is going to try and re-deport his client to a third party country like Libya or South Sudan, the Department of Homeland Security is going to have to give that information to the court in accordance with the law.

"Their intention is to re-deport him to a third country. Which one? I don't know," said Sandoval-Moshenberg. "Kilmar Abrego Garcia has the right to not be sent to a country in which he will suffer torture, but also to not be sent to a country that will in turn immediately re-deport him to El Salvador, where he will again be imprisoned...and tortured there."

"So for about the fifth or sixth time in this case, the government is trying the trick of sending its lawyers into court with inadequate information, with insufficient information," Sandoval-Moshenberg continued. "If they want to deport him to a third country, they need to name that country and they need to describe the process by which they're going to give him due process."