The feds have done nothing to comply with court orders to make the El Salvador government return alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was wrongfully deported to the country’s hellhole CECOT prison, his lawyers claimed ahead of a hearing in his case later Tuesday.
“The government’s updates do not indicate that any steps have been taken to comply with this court’s and the Supreme Court’s orders,” Abrego Garcia lawyers wrote in a three-page Maryland federal court filing Tuesday morning. “There is no evidence that anyone has requested the release of Abrego Garcia.”
The Trump administration maintains that Abrego Garcia is a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 and that he was in the country illegally, despite admitting he was deported as the result of a “clerical error.”
An immigration judge previously gave him protection from deportation after he claimed asylum.
Abrego Garcia – a Maryland resident – was shipped out last month to the notoriously dangerous and overcrowded Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) along with 260 other reputed gang members under the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act.
But the move went against a 2019 court order blocking Abrego Garcia’s deportation over concerns he would have been targeted by groups like the Barrio 18 gang.
The US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the man’s return.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers are expected to be in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland at 4 p.m. as they sue the administration over his removal.
In the Tuesday morning papers, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said the feds’ claims that the high court’s order only requires them to remove “domestic obstacles” for their client’s return are wrong.
“To give any meaning to the Supreme Court’s order, the Government should at least be required to request the release of Abrego Garcia,” the filing says. “To date, the Government has not done so.”
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