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By Mike Scarcella
(Reuters) -A U.S. judge ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador to the United States within three days, the latest legal setback for the administration’s hardline deportation policies.
The U.S. has already acknowledged Kilmar Abrego Garcia - a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the U.S legally with a work permit - was deported in error last month when the government flew three planes of migrants alleged to have ties to violent gangs or immigration violations to the Central America country.
But the administration has argued it has no legal authority to bring him back to the country, though Abrego Garcia’s lawyers dispute that.
"They put him there, they can bring him back,” Andrew Rossman, a lawyer at prominent law firm Quinn Emanuel who joined Abrego Garcia’s legal team on Friday, said in a statement.
After questioning government lawyers, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled at a Greenbelt, Maryland, court hearing that the government must take steps to bring him back to the United States by Monday.
The Justice Department will appeal the order to the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a court filing after the hearing.
In a statement, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Xinis should contact President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador "because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador."
In a court filing on early Saturday, the U.S. Justice Department called the judge’s order "indefensible" and urged the appeals court to immediately pause the ruling.
The United States said Abrego Garcia "has no legal right or basis to be in the United States at all" and that "the public interest obviously disfavors his return, let alone a slapdash one conducted as the result of judicial fiat."
Earlier, at the hearing on Friday, Abrego Garcia’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told the judge that there was no legal basis for the deportation.
“They admit they had no legal authorization to remove him to El Salvador,” Moshenberg said. “The public interest lies in the government following the law.”
Erez Reuveni, a lawyer for the government, conceded that Abrego Garcia should not have been removed.
"That is not in dispute," Reuveni said.
In an unusual exchange, Xinis grilled Reuveni on why the U.S. couldn’t get Abrego Garcia back - to which Reuveni said he had asked U.S. government officials that question without getting a satisfactory answer himself.
"The absence of evidence speaks for itself,” Reuveni said.
On Saturday, Reuveni, a senior Justice Department immigration lawyer, was abruptly put on indefinite leave from his job, according to the New York Times (NYSE:NYT), citing documents it reviewed. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told the newspaper in a statement: “At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States.... Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”
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The case is the latest flashpoint in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, which has raised constitutional questions and drawn the rebuke of a judge in Washington who is weighing whether U.S. officials violated a court order temporarily blocking the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members under an 18th-century law.
Trump on March 15 invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The administration said it sent two flights to El Salvador that day carrying deportees processed under the rarely used wartime statute and a third flight carrying people deported under other rules.
Abrego Garcia was wrongfully placed on the third flight despite an October 2019 judicial order granting him protection from deportation, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official has said in a court filing.
Abrego Garcia was stopped and detained by ICE officers on March 12 and questioned about his alleged gang affiliation. The government asserted in his earlier immigration dispute in 2019 that Abrego Garcia was a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, which he has denied.
His lawyers, who also represent his wife and five-year-old child in the U.S., in a court filing said the U.S. had failed to take any voluntary steps “to rectify what they themselves describe as an error.” Abrego Garcia’s wife, who attended Friday’s hearing, as well as his child, are U.S. citizens.
The Trump administration has also sent military troops to the U.S. border and reassigned federal agents to focus on immigration enforcement amid ramped up arrests and deportation efforts.