A federal judge on Friday ruled that the United States must bring back a man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month.
Judge Paula Xinis of the US District Court in Maryland directed the federal government to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, to the US no later than 11:59 p.m. on April 7.
“This was an illegal act,” Xinis said. “Congress said you can’t do it, and you did it anyway.”
During the hearing, Xinis also appeared skeptical about Abrego Garcia’s alleged ties to the MS-13 gang, which Trump officials have maintained, saying that she had not seen sufficient evidence to that effect.
“When someone is accused of membership in such a violent and predatory organization, it comes in the form of an indictment, complaint, criminal proceeding that has a robust process,” she said.
“I don’t see how they can even plausibly argue that there’s no capacity to bring someone back,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said “Maybe they could have made that argument prior to Wednesday of last week, but as soon as they put Kristi Noem within the walls of that prison, they really kneecap their argument to say that they can’t get someone out of that prison — because they got Kristi Noem out of that prison.”
The Civil Historian
Article URL : https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/04/politics/judge-orders-us-government-return-man-from-el-salvador/index.html