A federal judge expressed frustration with Justice Department lawyers at a hearing Friday to evaluate the Donald Trump administration’s efforts to deport African countries to Kilmar Ábrego Garcíathe Salvadoran who was deported by ICE by mistake to El Salvador.
Ábrego García is back in the United States in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE), but remains protected against deportation to his or her country of origin.
The federal district judge Paula Xinis is evaluating the arguments of Ábrego García’s lawyers, who maintain that the administration is illegally punishing its client by sending him to several African countries that will not accept him instead of complying with his request to be deported to Costa Rica.
Ábrego García’s lawyers argue that The judge should release her client. The judge said she will issue a written ruling later.
“They have gone around the world and chosen several places that they can identify, either to attack it for political purposes, or simply to purposely fail to select places that would be completely unacceptable to Mr. Ábrego García,” stated attorney Andrew Rossman. In August, the government indicated it would expel Abrego García to Uganda. After expressing fear, the government sought to send him to Eswatini, a small landlocked African country.
The government has tried deport Abrego García while his human trafficking criminal case is resolved in Tennesseebut Xinis issued an order in August preventing immigration officials from expelling him from the United States.
Abrego García’s lawyers have requested his client’s release from federal immigration detention while his case is resolvedciting a 2001 Supreme Court decision that determined that federal law does not allow “indefinite detention” for those the government seeks to deport.
Detention must be limited to a “period reasonably necessary” to achieve removal from the United States, the high court ruled.
Xinis is considering the possibility of release Abrego García from immigration custody while the challenge to his arrest progresses.
Keep reading:
· Judge orders a hearing to define whether the processing of immigrant Kilmar Abrego was “vengeful”
·Judge rejects reopening Kilmar Abrego García’s immigration case
· ICE transferred Salvadoran Kilmar Ábrego García to another detention center