US judge vows to rule ‘soon’ on Abrego Garcia’s fate after marathon hearing

GREENBELT, MD— A federal judge in Maryland on Friday vowed to issue an order “as soon as possible” in a case involving the legal status of Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the Trump administration’s plans to deport him from the U.S. to a third country within days — capping an extraordinary marathon hearing in his case that stretched for nearly seven hours — and has dominated headlines and federal court dockets for as many months.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis adjourned the court Friday evening with a promise to order on the matter as quickly as possible. Much of the hearing, however, was punctuated by incredulous objections from Xinis and frequent requests to “sidebar” with lawyers arguing both sides of the case. 

For Xinis, a judge who has presided over various iterations of Abrego’s civil case since March, the frequent pauses were a bit of an abberration, which she acknowledged. 

“I’ve always been a proponent of smooth jazz,” she quipped.

Certain portions of the day went far less smoothly. Xinis upbraided the Trump administration for its failure to produce a witness for the court to testify about what steps it had taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s deportation to a third country, describing the official who appeared on the stand as a witness “who knows less than nothing” about the case, and the countries they are considering removing him to. 

“This appears to be in direct contravention of the court,” she noted pointedly, shortly before adjourning for the day.

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Xinis had ordered the evidentiary hearing Monday, with the stated goal of evaluating a request from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, that he be released from immigration detention pending further action in his case, and to question a Trump administration official with “first-hand” knowledge of the government’s efforts to facilitate his deportation to the third country of Eswatini, where Trump officials said they intend to send him.

Still, the hearing was much more notable for what it failed to produce than what it did. Judge Xinis struggled to clarify seemingly contradictory statements and testimony from Trump officials, including what countries agreed or did not agree to accept Abrego Garcia, and when.

Lawyers for the Trump administration acknowledged to Xinis that they had previously identified three African countries — Uganda, Ghana, and Eswatini— as suitable third country locations to deport Abrego Garcia, pending dissolution of her emergency order keeping him in the U.S. 

But they mistakenly represented the positions of both Ghana and Eswatini. As of this writing, none of the three governments mentioned agreed to accept Abrego Garcia. 

Xinis honed in on this detail Friday evening. 

“Now that we know Costa Rica is on the table, have there been any conversations about removing him [there]?” she asked Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign, who said that there had not been. 

“Why not?” Xinis pressed. “You don’t want him in the country — you’ve said that,” she said, referring more broadly to the views of the the Trump administration.  “You have a country that will take him. You have a plaintiff who says ‘I’ll go there.'”

That the government is still pressing for other nations to accept him, she said, is a notion that is a bit “hard to swallow.”

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Many of the crucial details emerged after hours of grueling questioning with John Schultz, the deputy assistant director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, whom the government produced as its witness.

Despite his 20 years of experience at DHS, he appeared to know little about the case in question. He failed to answer most of the questions Xinis asked about the government’s plans to deport Abrego Garcia — including basic questions on who within DHS’s ranks had been assigned to handle Abrego Garcia’s case, and the status of various requests for deportation and communications with the countries it had identified.

Asked if he had been involved at all in Abrego Garcia’s case prior to Tuesday, Schultz said only that he “looked into his case in March,” but could not recall “in what capacity.”

Trump officials also told Xinis during court Friday that Eswatini’s government had initially declined to accept Abrego Garcia, but that they are currently having “additional discussions” on the matter and had not reached consensus. 

Should Eswatini’s government agree to take Abrego Garcia, Trump officials said, they could facilitate a plane to transport him “within 72 hours,” pending Xinis’s dissolving of her court order requiring Abrego Garcia be kept in the continental U.S.

The other two countries, Uganda and Ghana, were much clearer in their denials. 

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Ghana’s foreign minister, Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa, said on social media Friday morning that his country rejected the U.S. request to accept Abrego Garcia, something he said they “directly and unambiguously conveyed to U.S. authorities.”

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Andrew Rossman, pointed to the lack of assurances from the three African countries, including the two who have rejected his claim outright. 

The government’s goal, Rossman argued, has been to “to identify a series of countries that bear no connection to Abrego Garcia and that have not indicated any willingness to take him.” 

Rather, they argued, he should be sent to Costa Rica, the country DHS officials originally offered to send him to in coordination with a guilty plea in a separate criminal case in Nashville, where he was charged with two counts of smuggling.

Hours after he declined the plea offer, the government sent his lawyers a notice of removal to Uganda. Despite the language of the notice, Uganda’s government had not yet been asked to take Abrego Garcia, let alone agree to it. That detail was one of many unearthed, laboriously, over the course of many hours Friday.

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia, meanwhile, told the court he is “willing and able to board a plane immediately” to go to Costa Rica, if ICE agrees to send him there. 

His attorney, Andrew Rossman, argued that the court should order his release from immigration detention otherwise, arguing that “the government has not and is not currently detaining Mr. Abrego for purposes of effectuating his lawful removal,” but rather as a means of punishment.

The government of Costa Rica agreed to accept Abrego Garcia and outlined certain assurances it provided the U.S. in writing, including granting him refugee status there, and promises not to “refoul” him, or re-deport him to his home country of El Salvador, in keeping with an immigration judge’s 2019 court order.

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 Xinis, for her part, appeared sympathetic to that view. 

She also expressed new frustration with the Trump administration’s lawyers, whom she noted had now twice failed to provide the court with a witness who could speak to Abrego Garcia’s case.

“Prior to Monday, what efforts did the government make to find a third country that would accept Abrego?” Xinis asked Trump administration officials at one point during the hearing. 

As they struggled to answer, she noted in response, “That’s very troubling to me.”

Lawyers for the Trump administration are free to appeal any order from Judge Xinis to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, as DOJ’s Ensign indicated they might do shortly before court adjourned. 

Xinis warned later on that the government, in her view, had little margin for error.

“I’m trying really hard to give you the benefit of the doubt,” she told Ensign. But at this point, it’s “getting close to “three strikes, you’re out.”