A federal judge in Maryland will listen to arguments on Friday about whether the Trump administration can invoke The privilege of state secrets To retain information about the presentation Kilmar Abrego Garcia Back to the United States.
American District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the return of Abrego García from El Salvador in April and since then He directed the administration Provide documents and testimonies that show what you have done, if there is something, to comply.
Trump administration lawyers affirm that many of those details are protectedincluding sensitive diplomatic negotiations. Revealing the details would damage national security because foreign governments “would be less likely to work cooperatively with the United States,” they argued in a brief before the court.
Abrego García’s lawyers argue that the Administration has not shown “the slightest effort” to recover it after their wrong deportation. And they point to President Donald Trump’s Interview last month With ABC News, in which he said he could bring Abrego García back, but he will not.
“Even when the government speaks freely about Abrego García in public, in this litigation insists on the secret,” Abrego García’s lawyers wrote to the Court.
Friday’s audience approach will be A legal doctrine That is used more frequently in cases involving military and spies agencies. The Xinis failure could affect the central question that is coming about the case: Has the Trump administration followed its order to bring Abrego García back?
Deported Trump administration Maryland’s construction worker to El Salvador in March. The expulsion violated an order from the United States immigration judge In 2019, that protected Abrego García from deportation to his native country because he faced a probable persecution of a local gang that had terrified his family.
The American wife of Abrego García demanded and Xinis ordered his return on April 4. The Supreme Court ruled April 10 that the administration must work to bring it back.
Xinis later criticized the administration for not explaining what he has done to recover it and instructed the government to demonstrate I was following his order. The Trump administration appealed, but the Court of Appeals supported Xinis in a order.
The debate on the privilege of state secrets is the last development in the case.
In a legal summary presented on Monday, the Trump administration lawyers said they provided extensive information, including 1,027 pages of documents, to demonstrate that they are following the judge’s order.
They argued that Abrego García’s legal team is now “trying to get into the privileged internal functioning of the United States government apparatus and their communications with a foreign government.”
“Almost all demands of additional materials are protected by the secrets of the State and the privileges of the deliberative process and, therefore, cannot occur,” US lawyers wrote.
In his brief, Abrego García’s lawyers urged the judge to be skeptical, writing that the state of state secrets “is not to hide government errors or embezzlement.”
Abrego García’s lawyers noticed that American prosecutors claim that the Court followed the order of Xinis, while “the senior officials of the president in Down said precisely the opposite of the American public.”
For example, they cited a April 16 statement by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said: “He will not return to our country.”
“Again and again, the official statements of the Government, in the testimony of the Congress, television interviews and social networks, confirm that the production of this information did not impede national security,” wrote Abrego García’s lawyers.
The hearing is scheduled to start at 1 PM in the Federal Court in Greenbelt.
Trump administration officials have said Abrego Garcia was deported Based on an accusation of 2019 of the Maryland Police that he was a member of the MS-13 gang. Abrego García denied the accusation and was never accused of a crime, said his lawyers.
Later, the Administration acknowledged that the deportation of Abrego García to El Salvador was ” An administrative error “Due to the order of the immigration judge in 2019. But Trump and others have continued to insist that Abrego García was in the MS-13.
