U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey,  a Maryland Democrat who represents the district where Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife live, led the chant “bring him home” outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt before a hearing in Abrego Garcia’s case last month. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The Maryland federal judge overseeing the lawsuit concerning the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia unsealed documents Wednesday that the Trump administration had asked to keep unavailable to the public under the so-called state secrets privilege.

The order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis unsealed three documents that she said did not contain any privileged information. Xinis questioned the Trump administration’s broad use of the privilege during a hearing last month.

The request to unseal the documents came from a coalition of news organizations, arguing First Amendment rights and the public’s right to information in a case that has become a flashpoint between the judiciary branch and the Trump administration.

“The Press Movants rightly contend that, at common law, the public enjoys a presumptive right to access court records, overcome only when outweighed by competing interests,” Xinis wrote Wednesday.

President Donald Trump has said Abrego Garcia, who was removed in March due to an “administrative error,” will not return to the U.S. and Department of Justice attorneys on behalf of the Trump administration have argued in court that the Maryland man is in the custody of El Salvador and the federal government has no authority to bring him back.

In a separate case of another wrongly deported immigrant to El Salvador, the Department of Justice submitted a document detailing that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was personally working with the Salvadoran government to return a 20-year-old referred to in court documents as only “Cristian,” after another federal judge ordered his return.

Discovery documents

Some of the filings that were unsealed Wednesday had been public until the Trump administration moved to seal them.

One unsealed record related to an April discovery request Abrego Garcia’s attorneys made to the government seeking information about how the administration was facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must facilitate the Maryland man’s return, but stopped short of requiring it.

Another document related to the Trump administration’s request for more time in discovery proceedings.

“It does not disclose any potentially privileged or otherwise sensitive information for which a compelling government interest outweighs the right to access,” Xinis wrote.

One document was partially redacted, because it “includes some information potentially implicated by the state secrets privilege,” Xinis wrote.

The document, signed by Abrego Garcia attorney Jonathan G. Cooper, objected to the Trump administration’s attempt to pause discovery. The government had argued that complying with discovery in the lawsuit would hinder efforts to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

“As we explained to the government, in our meet-and-confer, we do not understand why the production of documents or interrogatory responses — none of which has occurred in the public eye — has any bearing on efforts to facilitate Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release and return,” Cooper wrote in the partially redacted document unsealed Wednesday.

A fourth document, a transcript from a late April hearing, will be released but redacted until the high-profile case is settled, Xinis wrote.

“Although the Court does not wholly agree with the Defendants’ overbroad characterizations of the government interests at stake, the Court does recognize that certain information touches upon Defendants’ asserted state secrets privilege as applied to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department,” she wrote about the partially redacted transcript.  

Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on April 4, 2025. Amid several legal disputes, the Trump administration has continued its controversial deportation policy to El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland slammed the Trump administration Friday for its “blatant lack of effort to comply” with her order earlier this month to report steps taken to facilitate the return of a second wrongly deported man to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

“Defendants’ untimely response is the functional equivalent of, ‘We haven’t done anything and don’t intend to,’” U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, whom President Donald Trump appointed in 2018, wrote in her order blasting a nonresponse from the Department of Homeland Security.

“Telling this Court that ‘[i]t is DHS’s understanding that Cristian is in the custody of El Salvador,’ adds nothing to the underlying record and simply reflects a lack of any effort to obtain or provide information regarding Cristian’s ‘current physical location and custodial status,’” she wrote.

Friday’s order from Gallagher is the latest scathing remark from federal judges who have found the Trump administration either violated their preliminary injunctions or restraining orders, or have broadly invoked executive privileges to stonewall information in immigration cases.

Gallagher, like other federal judges who have found themselves in the spotlight for blocking immigration-related policies, raised concerns about the Trump administration skirting due process rights and slow-walking rectifying deportation mistakes as the government continues its aggressive campaign of mass deportations.

Officials at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and President Donald Trump himself have continued to claim broad authority to conduct immigration removals. They have lashed out against the judges, labeling them as “activists” and accusing them of blocking the Trump administration’s agenda.

“Its very important that we’re able to get these people out fast,” Trump said during a press availability in the Oval Office Friday. “We have judges that don’t want that to happen. It’s a terrible thing.” 

Violating removal protections

Two cases of men whom the administration sent to El Salvador despite court orders blocking their removals stemmed from the first major case of the administration apparently disregarding a judicial order: a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg not to remove migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

Despite the mid-March temporary restraining order from Boasberg, three planes landed in El Salvador hours later and roughly 300 men were sent to the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. 

Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and a 20-year-old referred to in court documents only by the pseudonym Cristian, whose case Gallagher is handling, were among them.

Abrego Garcia had, since 2019, a court order protecting him from deportation to his home country of El Salvador because an immigration judge was concerned he would face gang violence if returned.

Cristian, who arrived in the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, was part of a class action that barred removal from the U.S. while his asylum case was pending in immigration court.

In both cases, the administration has said it is powerless to compel the Salvadoran government to release them, an argument Gallagher expressed frustration with Friday.

“Defendants simply reiterated their well-worn talking points on their reasons for removing Cristian and failed to provide any of the information the Court required,” Gallagher wrote.

The U.S. is paying El Salvador up to $15 million to detain removed immigrants.

“As a Venezuelan native, he is in El Salvador only because the United States sent him there pursuant to an agreement apparently reached with the government of El Salvador,” Gallagher wrote.

Judges see pattern of defiance

In Abrego Garcia’s high-profile case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, also in Maryland, said “nothing has been done” by the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Administration officials have admitted he was mistakenly deported to CECOT.

Xinis recently denied the Department of Justice’s request for an extra 30 days to submit documents on its efforts to return Abrego Garcia.

He remains in a lower-level prison in El Salvador, despite a Supreme Court order from April that directed the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S.

A judge in Massachusetts found the Trump administration violated his preliminary injunction barring third-country removals of migrants without due process after eight men were deported to South Sudan and given less than 24 hours to challenge their removal to a county on the cusp of another civil war.

Boasberg, who sits in a federal court in the District of Columbia, found probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt for violating his temporary restraining order that ordered deportation planes carrying men removed under the Alien Enemies Act to be returned to the U.S. over concerns they did not receive due process.

The Trump administration has challenged all those decisions on an emergency basis to the U.S. Supreme Court.

‘A judge in Boston running foreign policy’

Top administration figures have argued it is the judges who have overstepped, trespassing on the executive branch’s role in setting foreign policy.

In the Oval Office Friday, Trump singled out U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy, who is overseeing the case in Massachusetts.

“You can’t have a judge in Boston running foreign policy in places all over the country because he has a liberal bent or he’s a radical left person,” Trump said.

Murphy was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

That case, which centers on removing migrants to a country they are not citizens of, could play an outsized role in the legal battle over the administration’s approach to immigration after Supreme Court decisions this month have allowed the Trump administration to end two temporary legal programs and exposed more than 800,000 immigrants to potential deportation.

Many of those who lost protections hail from countries that are deemed too dangerous for return.

‘Get them out rapidly’

The Trump administration has publicly stated Abrego Garcia will not return and accused him, without producing evidence, that he is a leader of the MS-13 gang.

The president has also acknowledged that if he wanted to, he could secure the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. But Trump said he would not, alleging that Abrego Garcia has gang ties.

The president posted pictures on social media of Boasberg, who was pressing Department of Justice attorneys for answers on if his order was deliberately violated. It prompted a rare response from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who stressed the importance of an independent judiciary.

While the Supreme Court eventually lifted Boasberg’s nationwide injunction on the use of the Alien Enemies Act, federal judges in Colorado and parts of New York and Texas have blocked use of the wartime law within their districts, citing concerns about due process.

Top Trump officials, such as Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have floated suspending habeas corpus, which allows people who believe they are being unlawfully detained to petition for their release in court.

Habeas corpus claims are currently the only avenue that Venezuelans subject to the Alien Enemies Act have to challenge their deportation under the wartime law.

“We can’t keep them for years here as they go through trial,” Trump said Friday of swift deportations. “We have to get them out rapidly.” 

Abrego Garcia and Cristian

In an April order, Gallagher wrote that Cristian’s case is similar to Abrego Garcia’s and that “like Judge Xinis in the Abrego Garcia matter, this court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”

In that order, Gallagher said the federal government must show “a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).”

On May 6, she affirmed her decision that the Trump administration must facilitate Cristian’s return, but put her own order on pause to allow for Department of Justice attorneys to appeal to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

The appeals court declined the Trump administration’s request to pause her order.

Gallagher said Friday she would give the Trump administration officials until Monday to “remedy their noncompliance.”