In her order, Judge Xinis accused the DOJ of engaging in a «willful and bad faith refusal to comply» with discovery obligations.
The Trump administration on Tuesday sent a cache of documents to U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis after the Maryland judge issued a scathing eight-page order accusing federal officials of willfully defying her instructions in a case involving a man wrongly deported to El Salvador.
The case centers on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Maryland resident who was deported last month to El Salvador despite an earlier court order halting his removal. Abrego Garcia was arrested in 2019 and accused of being a member of the MS-13 gang, which the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization.
He denied being a member of the gang, but two judges, in separate rulings, concluded that he was an MS-13 member, based on confidential information provided to the court. He was shielded from deportation to his homeland because he said that MS-13’s gangland rivals would target him.
Abrego Garcia was deported anyway to El Salvador after being arrested last month in what the Trump administration lawyers said was an «administrative error.» His family denies any ties to gangs, and Abrego Garcia has no criminal record in the United States, though his wife accused him of domestic violence and obtained a restraining order against him. She now says they have been reconciled.
Trump campaigned on a hard-line immigration stance, pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.
