The Trump administration confirmed Saturday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man illegally deported to El Salvador, is alive but confined in a notorious anti-terrorism prison under the control of the Salvadoran government.
“He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador,” Michael Kozak, a top State Department official, said in a two-page, written declaration submitted to a judge under penalty of perjury.
The minimal information Kozak provided fell well short of the details demanded by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who had ordered the Trump administration to update her not only on Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts but on any steps it had taken to facilitate his return to the United States.
Kozak’s update, submitted 10 minutes after a court-ordered deadline Saturday, included just 49 words on Abrego Garcia’s location and no information about what officials had already done or planned to do to correct their error.
Kozak’s reference to Abrego Garcia, who is a Salvadoran citizen, being under that government’s control appeared to be intended to support a legal argument the Trump administration has put forward that American officials are in no position to insist on Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.
The administration has not provided any details to the court about what sort of control the U.S. may have over people it has sent to the anti-terrorism prison, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, in recent weeks. And it’s unclear if Kozak’s threadbare declaration even meets the standard set by the judge: an official with “personal knowledge” of Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts. Kozak said his knowledge came from “personal knowledge, reasonable inquiry, and information obtained from other State Department employees” — including unnamed personnel at the U.S. embassy in El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia’s case has generated a national furor after the Trump administration acknowledged it had erroneously sent him to El Salvador on March 15 in violation of a 2019 court order that prohibited him from being sent to his home country because of potential persecution by a local gang. At the time, Abrego Garcia was denied asylum but allowed to remain in Maryland, where he had been residing with his U.S. citizen wife and children when he was deported last month.
Xinis, an Obama appointee, has already deemed the Trump administration to be in defiance of an earlier order she issued to provide details about Abrego Garcia by Friday afternoon, leading her to demand indefinite, daily updates.
Trump administration lawyers have been increasingly combative with Xinis after the Supreme Court on Thursday largely upheld her order requiring the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia sent their own submission to Xinis Saturday, urging her to initiate contempt proceedings and to issue another order — this one with specific requirements for the administration to begin facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return. They noted that President Donald Trump — who is hosting El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, at the White House on Monday — said he would seek Abrego Garcia’s return if the Supreme Court required it.
“If the Supreme Court said bring somebody back, I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court. … I have great respect for the Supreme Court,” he told reporters Friday night on Air Force One. “I’m not totally well versed as to the specific case, but if they said to bring him back, I would tell them to bring him back.”
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers seized on that language. “Trump confirmed that the United States has the power to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from prison and return to the United States,” they wrote, asking the judge to order the U.S. to provide transportation for him from El Salvador to the U.S. and grant him an immigration status that will allow him to enter the country legally.
Xinis has set another hearing on the issue for Tuesday afternoon. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked the judge Saturday that she require officials of the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and State Department appear at that hearing to testify about Abrego Garcia’s status and what requests the U.S. has made of the Salvadoran government on the issue.
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