A federal judge in a scathing decision on Sunday said the Trump administration had no legal grounds to arrest, detain and deport a Salvadoran national from the United States to a prison in his home country, saying the decision was \u201cwholly lawless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in a 22-page decision ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Secretary Kristi Noem\u2002<\/u><\/a>to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNeither the United States nor El Salvador have told anyone why he was returned to the very country to which he cannot return, or why he is detained at CECOT,\u201d Xinis wrote, referring to the El Salvador prison now holding Abrego Garcia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat silence is telling. As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador \u2014 let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo avoid clear irreparable harm, and because equity and justice compels it, the Court grants the narrowest, daresay only, relief warranted: to order that Defendants return Abrego Garcia to the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The decision includes a number of new details about Garcia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xinis wrote that in 2019, an immigration judge granted Garcia withholding of removal that protected him from being returned to El Salvador. This protection was meant to protect a non-U.S. citizen, in this case Garcia, from being sent to a country where, more likely than not, he would face persecution risking his \u201clife or freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The protection was granted to Abrego Garcia because the judge concluded that El Salvador\u2019s Barrio 18 gang had been \u201ctargeting him and threatening him with death because of his family\u2019s pupusa business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n DHS did not appeal this decision, which was finalized in 2019, during the Trump presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But on March 12, Abrego Garcia while driving home from work with his son was stopped by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe officers had no warrant for his arrest and no lawful basis to take him into custody; they told him only that his \u201cstatus had changed,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abrego Garcia was first sent to an ICE facility in Baltimore before being sent to detention facilities in Louisiana and Texas, and then to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador, which the judge described as a \u201cnotorious supermax prison known for widespread human rights violations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abrego Garcia was one of dozens of men sent to the prison from the United States, but Xinis argued his case was unique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAbrego Garcia\u2019s case is categorically different \u2014 there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal. Nor does any evidence suggest that Abrego Garcia is being held in CECOT at the behest of Salvadoran authorities to answer for crimes in that country. Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The administration has argued that Xinis lacks the power to hear the case, but Xinis rejected all of their arguments, writing that \u201cdefendants are wrong on several fronts\u201d in part because Abrego Garcia is not challenging his confinement in the United States but his deportation to the prison in El Salvador.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She accused the administration of clinging \u201cto the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person \u2014 migrant and U.S. citizen alike \u2014 to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the \u2018custodian,\u2019 and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction,\u201d Xinis wrote. \u201cAs a practical matter, the facts say otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xinis argued the administration is effectively saying that it does not have the power to return Abrego Garcia to the United States, but she wrote that their argument \u201crings hollow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFirst, Defendants can and do return wrongfully removed migrants as a matter of course,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the end, Defendants\u2019 redressability argument rings hollow. As their counsel suggested at the hearing, this is not about Defendants\u2019 inability to return Abrego Garcia, but their lack of desire,\u201d Xinis wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n