A day after a long anticipated meeting of the Oval office in which the president of El Salvador said he would not return a Maryland man, erroneously, the federal judge who ordered his return to listen to the lawyers of the Trump administration at a judicial hearing on Tuesday afternoon.
Kilmar Abrego García is entering his second month in a mega prisponent of El Salvador after he was deported there on March 15 despite receiving a 2019 court order that leaves his deportation to that country.
Trump administration officials say that Abrego García, who escaped political violence in El Salvador 2011, is a member of the MS-13 criminal gang, but to date they have provided little evidence of that statement in the Court.
He is detained in the notorious prison of Cecot of El Salvador, along with hundreds of other alleged members of migrant gangs, under an agreement in which the Trump administration is paying El Salvador $ 6 million to the migrants of the United States Chamber as part of the repression of immigration of President Donald Trump.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, at an Oval office meeting on Monday with President Trump and the visiting president of El Salvador, said that Abrego García’s return is “to El Salvador.”
“If El Salvador … I would like to return it, we would facilitate it,” he said.
Asked by reporters about Abrego García, President Bukele replied: “I don’t have the power to return it to the United States.”
In a motion presented on Tuesday before the hearing, Abrego García’s lawyers argued that the Trump administration has not taken any measure to fulfill the orders to facilitate their release.
Photo without a date provided by the United States District Court for the Maryland district, a man identified by Jennifer Vásquez Sura when her husband, Kilmar Abrego García, is directed by force by the guards through the Center for Confinement of Terrorism in Tecolluca, El Salvador.
United States District Court for the Maryland district through AP
“There is no evidence that someone has requested the release of Abrego García,” they wrote in the presentation.
The lawyers also discouraged with the interpretation of the government of the word “facilitate”, which the administration has argued in judicial documents is limited to eliminating any domestic obstacle that would prevent Abrego García’s return to the United States.
Interpreting the term in that way, would argue the lawyers of Abrego García, would make the order of the Supreme Court “null” that the Government facilitates its release.
“To give any meaning to the order of the Supreme Court, at least the Government must request the release of Abrego García. To date, the Government has not done so,” they wrote in their motion.
In their daily update on the state of the case, ordered last week by the American district judge Paula Xinis, the lawyers of the Department of Justice said Monday afternoon that the National Security Department does not “have the authority to extract by force a foreigner of the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”
The photo provided by Murray Osorio PLLC shows Kilmar Abrego García.
MURRAY OSORIO PLLC VIA AP
The Supreme Court last week unanimously ruled that Judge Xinis “adequately demands that the Government” facilitates “the release of Abrego García de la Custody in El Salvador and ensures that his case is handled as it would have been not to have been incorrectly sent to El Salvador.”
“The government must be prepared to share what it can with respect to the steps it has taken and the perspective of more steps,” added the Superior Court.
In an interview on Monday night with Linsey Davis from ABC News, a Abrego García lawyer said he hopes that Tuesday’s audience “illuminates a fire under the government to comply with the order of the Supreme Court.”
“What we are asking [of Trump] It is exactly what the Supreme Court told him, “said lawyer Benjamin Osorio.” Personally, I have worked with DHS before to facilitate the return of several other clients who were deported and then won their cases at the circuit court or in the Supreme Court, and ICE facilitated their return. “
“So we are not asking anyone to do anything illegal,” said Osorio. “We ask you to continue the law.”
“It feels a bit like Spider-Man’s meme, where everyone points to everyone else,” Osorio said about Bukele’s statement that he does not have the power to return to Garcia. “But at the same time, I mean, we are renting spaces of Salvadorans. They are paying them to house these people, so that we could stop payment and allow us to return us.”
When asked if he trusts that Abrego García will be returned, Osorio said he was worried but hopeful.
“I am worried about the rule of law, I am worried about our Constitution, I am worried about due process,” he said. “Then, at this point, I am optimistic to see what happens at the Federal Court hearing.”
