Government Stonewalls Court Again About Kilmar Abrego Garcia

District Court Judge Paula Xinis began building a case about holding Donald Trump’s regime in contempt of court for its persistent non-compliance with orders from both her court and the Supreme Court to retrieve Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the CECOT prison in El Salvador.

The regime is under orders from both courts to facilitate return of Abrego Garcia to the USA, as well as provide daily updates about his status, what they are doing to bring him back and what they plan to do toward that end. Government updates have repeatedly fallen short of providing more than one vague answer to one of those questions. Yesterday the government was more brazenly defiant.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have requested that Xinis find the government in contempt of court.

Judge Xinis said, “I’ve gotten nothing. I’ve gotten no real response, and no real legal justification for not answering.” If the regime will not answer her questions “then justify why. That’s what we do in this house.”

She dismissed government attempts to count the Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele as part of work on the case. In that meeting, Bukele bluntly said he will not release Abrego Garcia.

In her ruling after the hearing, Xinis notably slashed the regime’s dithering about what the Supreme Court’s use of the word “facilitate” means:

Notably, to “facilitate” means “to make the occurrence of (something) easier; to render less difficult.” Merriam-Webster defines the term as “to make easier or less difficult: to free from difficulty or impediment.” And the Oxford English Dictionary defines “facilitate” as “[t]o assist (a person); to enable or allow (a person) to do something, achieve a particular result, etc., more easily.” Defendants therefore remain obligated, at a minimum, to take the steps available to them toward aiding, assisting, or making easier Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and resuming his status quo ante. But the record reflects that Defendants have done nothing at all.

Instead, the Defendants obliquely suggest that “facilitate” is limited to “taking all available steps to remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here.” The fallacy in the Defendants’ argument is twofold. First, in the “immigration context” as it were, facilitating return of those wrongly deported can and has included more extensive governmental efforts, endorsed in prior precedent and DHS publications. Thus, the Court cannot credit that “facilitating” the ordered relief is as limited as Defendants suggest.

Second, and more fundamentally, Defendants appear to have done nothing to aid in Abrego Garcia’s release from custody and return to the United States to “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been” but for Defendants’ wrongful expulsion of him. Thus, Defendants’ attempt to skirt this issue by redefining “facilitate” runs contrary to law and logic.

Xinis ordered a two-week expedited discovery schedule. Four officials named from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security must sit for the depositions by 23 April 2025. The regime must hand over documents before the end of the month showing what it has done to comply with her order to retrieve Abrego Garcia and give him the due process he would have if he had not been spirited away to another country.

She assigned Abrego Garcia’s attorneys authority to subpoena documents, send interrogatory requests, and subpoena up to two more people to collect “evidence about:

• current physical location and status of Abrego Garcia
• what the regime has done facilitate Abrego Garcia’s immediate return to the USA
• what else the regime will do, and when, to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return

After the hearing, Xinis filed a written order saying if the regime fails to comply with that portion of her order, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers “are free to seek separate sanctions on an expedited basis.”

About the urgency of the discovery period, Xinis said her court will have “no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding” to hold back answers or delay any further. “We’re going to move…There are no business hours while we do this…Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments. I’m usually pretty good about things like that in my court, but not this time. So, I expect all hands on deck.”

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