The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is suing all 15 judges on the Maryland federal bench, arguing the court’s policy of automatically pausing certain immigration cases that come before it is unlawful.
Attorneys for the Trump administration argued to the very court they are suing that the policy, imposed through an order the court issued in May, is an “egregious example of judicial overreach.”
An attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice offered some mixed praise of President Donald Trump‘s communication skills during a previously secret hearing in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case.
A transcript of the hearing was recently released, in redacted form and limited fashion, by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, a Barack Obama appointee, in response to a motion to unseal several documents in the case filed by multiple news organizations.
While the transcript is not yet available on the public court docket, The New York Times’ Alan Feuer obtained a copy of the document and posted a notable snippet of an exchange between the judge and DOJ attorney Jonathan Guynn in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
“President Trump is you know, is a master messenger in many ways, but he also doesn’t speak with precision about things sometimes,” the government lawyer said. “And I think that this might be one of those situations where perhaps his comments were based on what he was recalling may have been the state of play previously.”
While the transcript is not yet available on the public court docket, The New York Times’ Alan Feuer obtained a copy of the document and posted a notable snippet of an exchange between the judge and DOJ attorney Jonathan Guynn in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
“President Trump is you know, is a master messenger in many ways, but he also doesn’t speak with precision about things sometimes,” the government lawyer said. “And I think that this might be one of those situations where perhaps his comments were based on what he was recalling may have been the state of play previously.”
The DOJ lawyer’s remarks came amid a discussion about the 45th and 47th president’s ability to have Abrego Garcia brought back stateside.
Until the Maryland man was abruptly returned earlier this month, the official position of the government was that the U.S. simply no longer had control of the situation. Attorney after attorney, in courtroom after courtroom, insisted the decision rested with officials in El Salvador.
Xinis appeared suspicious of this claim, based on an April 29 interview of Trump by since-fired ABC News anchor Terry Moran. During that interview, Trump said he “could” just pick up the phone and have the Salvadoran president return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. But, Trump added, “we have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”
The hearing was the very next day — and part of Guynn’s job was cleaning up Trump’s statement, which flatly contradicted the DOJ’s position.
Xinis was not, however, the only judge to be struck by Trump’s admission about Abrego Garcia during the ABC News interview.
During a May 7 hearing in the initial Alien Enemies Act case before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a jurist who got his start under George W. Bush and was then promoted by Barack Obama, the president’s words were put directly to DOJ attorney Abhishek Kambli.
“Is the president not telling the truth, or could he secure the release of Mr. Abrego Garcia?” Boasberg asked the government lawyer.
The DOJ attorney tried to sidestep the question by launching into a broader argument about the government’s case. But he was quickly brought back on track by Boasberg, who interjected to say he wanted his questions answered first….
A Constitutional Clash In Three Acts
In three closely watched anti-immigration cases, the Trump administration continued its slo-mo constitutional defiance of the judicial branch …
Act I: Non-Responsiveness
Act II: Delay Shenanigans
Act III: Misdirection And Mischaracterization
Stone Cold Stonewalling
New details about the extent of the Trump administration’s stonewalling in the case of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia were revealed in a court filing Thursday. After six weeks of what was originally supposed to be two weeks of expedited discovery, the government has provided virtually no meaningful discovery responses, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers report.
Normal discovery disputes would not usually be newsworthy, but this comes in the context of a contempt of court inquiry. The administration’s defiance on discovery and the associated gamesmanship cut against its already-dubious claims that it has complied with the order by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return – an order endorsed and echoed by the Supreme Court.
…
After the Trump administration late Wednesday asked for an extension of the May 30 deadline by which all discovery is to be completed, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed a blistering response demonstrating how little discovery the government has produced so far. It was already clear from public filings that the government had offered witnesses for deposition who had little or no personal knowledge of the facts of the case, in contravention of the judge’s order. The precise details of that defiance are unclear because many filings remain under seal.
The new details show how desultory the government’s document production has been, too. As of two weeks ago, the government had only produced 34 actual documents. In the subsequent two weeks it was given in which to produce rolling discovery, it coughed up a total of one additional partial document, according to Abrego Garcia’s filing.
So what’s the next step? Will the supreme court and lower courts hold the administration in contempt and enforce the contempt citations?
Trump and his Republican stooges in Congress apparently anticipated this. Hidden inside their Big Ugly Bill is a provision intended to block the courts from using contempt to enforce its orders. It reads:
“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued …”
Translated: no federal court may enforce a contempt citation.
The measure would make most existing injunctions – in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases and others – unenforceable.
Its only purpose is to weaken the power of the federal courts.
…
But the provision inside the bill that neuters the federal courts is even worse. It would remove the last remaining constraint on Trump, and thereby effectively end American democracy.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has warned the Trump administration about its handling of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case, a Salvadoran national mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Key officials have admitted ignorance about crucial details in court proceedings, raising concerns about compliance with the judge’s order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Xinis has reportedly set a new compliance deadline and scheduled an in-person hearing.
Xinis said, “Evidently missing from the defendants’ filing is the privilege log that this court ordered to be produced.” She added, “Failure to file the privilege log or otherwise respond will be construed as an intentional refusal to comply with this court’s orders.”
…
Xinis said, “You haven’t complied, and you haven’t in bad faith.”
Xinis has identified officials’ ignorance as noncompliance with her order to produce witnesses with direct knowledge of Abrego Garcia’s situation.
…Xinis stated, “The whole reason we’re here is because I’ve said repeatedly you’ve done nothing, and now you tell the world you’re not going to do anything.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/my-head-is-spinning-deportation-draws-backlash/ss-AA1FwI5y
In an important federal case in Massachusetts over whether deportees can be sent to third countries rather than their countries of origin, the Trump administration admitted Friday to a grievous error and managed to compound it in the process.
It’s a bit complicated so let me boil it down to its essentials:
- Background: A gay Guatemalan national who had a U.S. immigration judge order barring his removal to his home country because he feared continued persecution was instead deported to Mexico in February by the Trump administration, partly on the grounds that he had told ICE that he didn’t fear being sent to Mexico. That was odd because the man, identified only by the initials O.C.G., had previously testified that he had been targeted and raped in Mexico, his lawyers say.
- Thursday: The Trump DOJ abruptly cancelled the scheduled deposition of an ICE official “whom Defendants previously identified as giving Plaintiff O.C.G. notice of deportation to Mexico and recording his response of lack of fear,” O.C.G.’s lawyers later told the court.
- Friday: The Trump DOJ filed a “Notice of Errata” admitting that during the judge’s ordered discovery in the case it had been unable to “identify any officer who asked O.C.G. whether he had a fear of return to Mexico.” A key factual element of the Trump administration’s case had evaporated. But it got worse …
- Sunday: Lawyers for the deportee – who is now in hiding in Guatemala because he fears persecution as a gay man – filed an emergency motion pointing out, among other things, that the government’s filing about its own error revealed the deportees name and other information, further jeopardizing his safety despite a court order anonymizing his identifying information.
Still with me? In the course of admitting its error, the Trump administration outed the gay man who it had wrongfully deported in the first place.
This is what happens when you staff up with a bunch of sycophantic suck-ups and bimbos instead of competent personnel!
The Trump Department of Justice faces a new legal deadline after a federal judge warned that its failure to comply with a court order could be treated as an “intentional refusal” to follow the law.
In a sharply worded one-page order, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said the Justice Department missed a key deadline to produce a privilege log tied to its claims of the state secrets privilege in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national wrongfully deported to the country in March.
“Evidently missing from the defendants’ filing is the privilege log that this court ordered to be produced,” Xinis wrote in the document posted by Politico’s Kyle Cheney. The judge gave the government a Tuesday afternoon deadline to file the log and delivered a warning.
“Failure to file the privilege log or otherwise respond will be construed as an intentional refusal to comply with this court’s orders,” according to the order. The dispute bubbled up last week after the Trump administration invoked the state secrets privilege to shield details surrounding Abrego Garcia’s case, according to a report in Politico.
The judge set the next in-person hearing for Friday.
US officials have argued the traffic stop in November 2022, during which Abrego Garcia was not detained, supports their claims that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 and involved in human trafficking. The stop resulted in no charges, and there was no mention of human trafficking in the parts of the redacted report that have been made available.
Yet the 2022 traffic stop now could play into the ongoing political debate and legal standoff over Abrego Garcia, who is still in El Salvador while a federal judge demands answers and more evidence from the Trump administration.
So far in the ongoing court proceeding over his custody, his attorneys have said that the US in his 2019 immigration proceedings offered little reason to believe Abrego Garcia was tied to a gang, other than the fact he wore a Chicago Bulls hat and that a confidential informant provided a tip to authorities.
…
“There is no known link or association between him and the MS-13 gang,” his lawyers told the federal judge last month.
In a statement provided to CNN regarding the bodycam footage, Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said, his client “has been denied the most basic protections of due process—no phone call to his lawyer, no call to his wife or child, and no opportunity to be heard.”
Sandoval-Moshenberg added that “I see no evidence of a crime in this footage. But the point is not the traffic stop — it’s that Mr. Abrego Garcia deserves his day in court. Bring him back to the United States, return him before the same immigration judge who heard his case in 2019, and let him speak for himself.”
…
Earlier, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Highway Patrol told CNN that Abrego Garcia was flagged to federal law enforcement, “who made the decision not to detain him.”
According to a Department of Homeland Security statement released last month about the incident, federal officials released Abrego Garcia with a warning for driving with an expired license.
President Trump’s lawyers have set a new legal hurdle before the Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
Even if Kilmar Abrego Garcia is returned to the United States, he will be held as an illegal immigrant can be deported again because he is member of a foreign criminal gang, they said.
The uncompromising statement presented to a Maryland judge echoed the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Monday.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi insisted Abrego Garcia will not be allowed to enter or remain in this country. “He’s not a Maryland man. He’s part of foreign terrorist organization. He’s a member of MS-13,” she said.
Real leaders know how to admit when they’ve made a mistake, suck it up, apologize, and move on.
Sadly, real leadership is utterly lacking in Washington today.
