Fate of Abrego Garcia hangs in the balance as judge grills DOJ on removal order
GREENBELT, MD — Lawyers for Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia urged a federal judge in Maryland on Thursday to prohibit the Trump administration from deporting their client to the third...
By Fox News · Fox News
GREENBELT, MD — Lawyers for Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia urged a federal judge in Maryland on Thursday to prohibit the Trump administration from deporting their client to the third country of Liberia, the latest twist in a nine-month legal fight that has garnered international attention and dominated headlines and court dockets for months. That effort appeared stunted Thursday, after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis tried and failed to answer a more fundamental question of whether the government had obtained a final order of removal to deport Abrego Garcia from the U.S. Without that document, she said, Abrego Garcia is "at a minimum" entitled to certain immediate relief under Supreme Court precedent, just as the Justice Department is free to seek relief from higher courts. "You’ve raised all these arguments, and they all depend on me having a withholding of removal order," Xinis said Thursday. US JUDGE VOWS TO RULE 'SOON' ON ABREGO GARCIA'S FATE AFTER MARATHON HEARING Though she vowed to issue a ruling "soon," Thursday's hearing ended with little in the way of satisfactory answers — much to the chagrin of Xinis, the federal judge who has presided over Abrego Garcia's civil case and habeas cases since March. "Today was a zero in my view," she noted at one point in apparent exasperation. Lawyers for the Trump administration had asked Xinis to dissolve an emergency order she handed down in August ordering Abrego Garcia remain in U.S. immigration custody. They told her earlier this month that they planned to immediately deport him to the third country of Liberia pending the dissolution of her emergency order. They previously tried and failed to remove Abrego Garcia to the African countries of Eswatini, Uganda, and briefly Ghana. During Thursday's hearing, Xinis again upbraided the Justice Department for failing to tell the court why Costa Rica, a country that previously granted assurances to grant Abrego Garcia legal status in the country and not to refoul hi…