Federal judge calls deportation of Salvadoran man in Maryland ‘wholly lawless’

A federal judge’s 22-page decision on Sunday called the deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador “wholly lawless.”

And after an appeals court on Monday denied a motion from the Department of Justice to stay the judge’s order to return Garcia to the U.S., the Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

Abrego Garcia, 29, was deported to an El Salvadoran megaprison last month for being an alleged MS-13 gang member. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Department of Homeland Security and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S., where he was living in Maryland. 

“Although the legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear, Abrego Garcia’s case is categorically different—there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal,” Xinis wrote. 

“Nor does any evidence suggest that Abrego Garcia is being held in CECOT at the behest of Salvadoran authorities to answer for crimes in that country. Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless,” she continued. 

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Also on Sunday, Attorney General Pam Bondi doubled down on the Trump administration’s decision to deport Abrego Garcia.

“We have to rely on what ICE says,” Bondi said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview. “We have to rely on what Homeland Security says. They’re our clients, and I firmly believe in the work they are doing, and we’re going to make America safe again. That was President Trump’s directive to all of us.”

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The White House has remained firm in its decision to deport Abrego Garcia following a report from The Atlantic that federal attorneys said that there was an “administrative error” in bringing him to CECOT men’s prison in El Salvador.

Court filings also show Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. in 2011 at the age of 16 after fleeing gang threats in El Salvador, the outlet reported. 

READ THE FEDERAL JUDGE’S ORDER – APP USERS, CLICK HERE:

Abrego Garcia later married a U.S. citizen and worked in construction to support her, their son and her two children from a previous relationship.

The allegations about his affiliation with MS-13 stem from a 2019 arrest outside a Maryland Home Depot store, where he and other young men were looking for work, according to The Associated Press.

Abrego Garcia was arrested in Baltimore on March 12 after working a shift as a sheet metal apprentice in Baltimore and picking up his 5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house, his lawyers’ complaint stated.

Fox News Digital’s Taylor Penley, Brie Stimson, Bill Mears and The Associated Press contributed to this report.