documents released by DOJ
- On March 15 [of 2025], the Trump administration sent “three planeloads” of Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees, including Abrego Garcia, to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador, alleging that they were members of criminal organizations.
- Abrego Garcia’s wife sued the United States on March 24, 2025, with herself, Abrego Garcia, and their son as plaintiffs. Their attorneys sought court intervention to compel the administration to facilitate his return.
- On April 4, 2025, Judge Paula Xinis ruled that his detention [Kilmar Abrego Garcia], without any kind of judicial documentation warranting it, was illegal and that he would be irreparably harmed if he remained in El Salvador, and she ordered the government to ensure his return to the U.S. no later than April 7.
- On April 5 [of 2025], the Department of Justice appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
- The following day [on 6 April 2025], Judge Xinis issued a 22-page opinion reaffirming her previous ruling. The opinion stated the deportation “shocks the conscience” and was “wholly lawless.”
- The same day [7 April 2025], Chief Justice John Roberts issued a short order temporarily staying Xinis’s order, allowing the Trump administration to continue keeping Abrego Garcia in the foreign prison pending immediate further review from the entire Supreme Court.
- On April 7 [of 2025], an appeals court panel of the Fourth Circuit consisting of judges Stephanie Thacker, Harvie Wilkinson III, and Robert King unanimously denied the Trump administration’s appeal of Xinis’s order. The appellate court stated that: “[The Government] has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process … The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.”
- On April 7 [of 2025], the Trump administration appealed the Fourth Circuit’s ruling via the Supreme Court’s emergency docket.
- On April 10, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador to be illegal.
- After the Supreme Court’s April 10 ruling remanding certain issues back to the district court, Judge Xinis amended her earlier order that the Trump administration “facilitate and effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return, telling the Trump administration instead to “take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible” and to update her on the morning of April 11
How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.
Nayib Bukele on returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US- On April 14 [of 2025], Homeland Security Department lawyer Joseph Mazzara updated the court that his department “does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”
Home-growns are next. The home growns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.
Donald Trump to Nayib Bukele- On April 15 [of 2025], Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Abrego Garcia’s wife, pleaded for the return of her husband outside of the Maryland courthouse that was holding a status hearing on his case
- On April 16, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security posted a copy of a civil restraining order against Abrego Garcia filed by his wife in 2021.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Kilmar_Abrego_Garcia
- Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia (Wikipedia)
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador who was illegally deported from the United States on March 15, 2025, in what the Trump administration called “an administrative error.” He was then imprisoned without trial in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a maximum security prison in El Salvador, despite never having been charged with or convicted of a crime in either country. His lawyers argue that his imprisonment is part of an agreement to jail U.S. deportees there in exchange for payment, and this was confirmed by United States senator Chris Van Hollen, who had spoken with Félix Ulloa, El Salvador’s vice president. The administration has defended the deportation in the press by accusing him of membership in the MS-13 gang, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. This accusation was based on a bail determination made in a 2019 immigration court proceedings that Abrego Garcia contested.