Abrego Garcia’s lawyers say they’re ‘still in the dark’ about government’s efforts to facilitate his return

(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia said in a court filing Thursday that after conducting three depositions, they are “still in the dark about the Government’s efforts to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody and return to the United States.”

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, seeking to determine how the government has failed to return Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, last month ordered expedited discovery in the case which included the depositions of the four government officials who submitted status updates on Abrego Garcia to the court.

In their filing on Thursday, attorneys for Abrego Garcia asked Judge Xinis to authorize three additional depositions of officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of State, and the Department of Justice.

“As the Court stated in that Order, “discovery is necessary in light of Defendants’ uniform refusal to disclose ‘what it can’ regarding their facilitation of Abrego Garcia’s release and return to the status quo ante,” the lawyers wrote.

The motion comes a day after Judge Xinis, in a court order, said that the Trump administration had invoked the rarely used state secrets privilege to shield information about the case, and scheduled a May 16 hearing on the matter.

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who has been living with his wife and children in Maryland, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13. His wife and attorneys deny that he is an MS-13 member.

The Trump administration, while acknowledging that Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in error, has said that his alleged MS-13 affiliation makes him ineligible to return to the United States.

“Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador and should never have been in this country and will not be coming back to this country,” Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Thursday in an appearance at a budget hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“There is no scenario where Garcia will be in the United States again. If he were to come back, we would immediately deport him again,” Noem said.