Protesters outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Greenbelt rally on April 4, 2025, in support of Kilmar  Abrego Garcia, calling for him to be returned to the U.S. (Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom).

GREENBELT, Maryland — A top U.S. immigration official testifying in federal court Thursday did not give details of the Trump administration’s plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia if he is released from pre-trial detention next week in Tennessee.

Thomas Giles, the assistant director for enforcement and removal operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was noncommittal about how the agency would handle Abrego Garcia if he is released from jail in Tennessee where he awaits trial on federal charges, saying officials could not consider the question until he’s in ICE custody.

“There’s been no decision made as he’s not in ICE custody,” Giles said.

Department of Justice attorneys have said they would seek Abrego Garcia’s removal again, because he has a final order of removal, but have not detailed the process for that deportation, raising concerns of a lack of due process in the closely watched case that were not answered by Giles’ testimony Thursday.

Giles appeared after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration on Monday to produce a witness to detail the plan for Abrego Garcia’s removal.

The government is likely to pursue either a revocation of the deportation protections the El Salvador national and longtime Maryland resident has had since 2019 that bar deportation to his home country, or removal to a country other than El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia was wrongly removed in March to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador where he says he faced psychological and physical torture.

ICE detainer

Giles said that ICE placed a detainer on Abrego Garcia last month, meaning the agency requested the U.S. Marshals to notify ICE when he will be released so immigration officials can detain him. Abrego Garcia could be released July 16 after a pretrial hearing that day in Tennessee.

The Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. last month to face federal charges of human smuggling that stemmed from a 2019 traffic stop. Abrego Garcia has denied the charges.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said in court Thursday that they found out Abrego Garcia was brought back to the U.S. through media reports and they were given no information by the Trump administration.

DOJ attorneys said that Abrego Garcia will be removed from the U.S. before his trial in Tennessee is complete.

Restraining order considered

Attorneys for Abrego Garcia said Thursday they are concerned he will again be removed without due process or the ability to challenge his removal to another country if he fears he will experience harm or persecution. 

Earlier in the week, they pressed for Xinis to have Abrego Garcia brought back to Maryland, rather than remain in Tennessee. 

Xinis is still mulling that request from Abrego Garcia’s attorneys. This week, she also denied the Department of Justice’s move to dismiss the case as moot, because Abrego Garcia had been returned to the U.S.

Xinis said Thursday she is considering issuing a temporary restraining order if Abrego Garcia is released on pre-trial detention. The order would last for 48 business hours and bar immigration officials from removing Abrego Garcia to a detention center outside of Tennessee or from the U.S.

She also called for a hearing on Friday at 9 a.m. ET on the temporary restraining order.

Vague answers

Sascha Rand, an attorney representing Abrego Garcia in the immigration case in Maryland, grilled Giles on how familiar he was with Abrego Garcia’s case.

Giles said that he had not directly overseen Abrego Garcia’s case and had about four hours to prepare for Thursday’s hearing.

Rand asked Giles which country Abrego Garcia would be removed to if not El Salvador.

Giles said that if Abrego Garcia is removed to a third country, it would take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to determine which country.  

Giles said that Mexico is one country that accepts nationals from other countries – including El Salvador – and has diplomatic assurance that an individual removed won’t face harm.

He added that South Sudan is also a country that the Trump administration has deemed acceptable to send deportees to.

In a ruling last month, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to move forward with removing eight men from different nationalities to South Sudan, which recently experienced a civil war. The U.S. State Department advises against traveling to the country.

Xinis asked Giles if Mexico, “at a minimum,” would be a country Abrego Garcia could be removed to.

Giles said that was possible.

Rand asked if South Sudan was a possibility.

Giles said that “we have removed people to South Sudan.”

Rand then asked Giles multiple times which path the Trump administration was considering for Abrego Garica, either deportation to a third country, or trying to remove the 2019 bar on removal to El Salvador.

“Do you have any actual knowledge of which one of these tracks Mr. Abrego Garcia might be put on next Wednesday?” Rand asked.

Giles said because Abrego Garcia is not in ICE custody, a discussion on the options for his removal is not happening. He said those determinations will be made once Abrego Garcia is in ICE detention.

Giles added that it’s also unclear where Abrego Garcia will be held in ICE detention, as it’s based on available bed space, meaning Abrego Garcia could be transferred anywhere in the U.S.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., right, meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident who was erroneously deported to El Salvador by ICE agents. (Photo courtesy Van Hollen's office)

This report has been updated.

GREENBELT, Maryland — The Trump administration plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a third country once he is released from federal custody, a Department of Justice attorney disclosed during a Thursday emergency court hearing.

Attorneys for the unlawfully deported Abrego Garcia had made an emergency request Thursday to bring him back to Maryland while his criminal case continues.

The move by the lawyers followed earlier public statements from Trump administration officials that they would deport Abrego Garcia to El Salvador upon his release from a Tennessee federal court as soon as Friday. But Thursday, plans appeared to have shifted to deportation somewhere else.

DOJ attorney Jonathan Guynn, under questioning by District of Maryland Judge Paula Xinis, said the Trump administration planned to deport Abrego Garcia, and “to a third country is my understanding.”

“He will be taken into (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) custody and removal proceedings will be initiated,” Guynn said of Abrego Garcia’s release. “There are no imminent plans to remove him to a third country.”

Xinis declined the request to return him to Maryland, arguing that Abrego Garcia has not been released and that she’s not clear if she has the jurisdiction to fulfill such a request.

She added that Guynn said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security does not have “imminent plans” to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country, while holding out that possibility.

The Supreme Court this week, ruled that it will allow, for now, the Trump administration to continue carrying out deportations to third countries, after a Massachusetts judge barred removals without proper notice. In such cases, immigrants are deported to countries that are not their native countries and may be far from them.

Jonathan Cooper, a partner of Quinn Emmanuel, the firm representing Abrego Garcia in his immigration case, tried to ask Xinis if she would require the Trump administration to notify Cooper and his team before deporting him to a third country.

“We have concerns that the government may try to move Mr. Abrego Garcia quickly over the weekend,” Cooper said.

Xinis said she would not because Guynn said that the Trump administration had no “imminent plans” to remove Abrego Garcia.

Cooper laid out the same concerns in the written emergency request to Xinis Thursday.

“The Government’s public statements leave little doubt about its plan: remove Abrego Garcia to El Salvador once more,” according to the complaint written by attorneys from Quinn Emmanuel.

“If this Court does not act swiftly, then the Government is likely to whisk Abrego Garcia away to some place far from Maryland,” it says.

Federal prosecutors in Tennessee court have said that should Abrego Garcia be released, he would be immediately arrested by ICE agents and could face deportation back to El Salvador, despite having protections from such removal since 2019.

Tennessee case

Abrego Garcia was returned from El Salvador earlier this month to the United States to face federal criminal charges lodged in Tennessee that accuse him “of conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain” and “unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.”

The indictment occurred while Abrego Garcia was housed in a Salvadoran prison.

The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee when police pulled Abrego Garcia over for speeding. Eight other men were in the car, but neither Abrego Garcia nor the passengers were arrested.

DHS opened an investigation into the three-year-old stop and Attorney General Pam Bondi held a press conference on the day Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. to face federal charges.

She argued that the traffic stop was part of a years-long human smuggling scheme where Abrego Garcia was paid by members of the MS-13 gang to transport migrants who entered the country without legal authorization to destinations across the country.

His attorneys have denied the charges and Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty in federal court in Nashville.

Stephen Miller, the chief architect of many of the president’s immigration policies and a senior White House adviser, has written on social media that Abrego Garcia would be deported back to El Salvador if released. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have pointed to that statement as to why they want him brought back to Maryland.

The Trump administration has alleged that Abrego Garcia is a leader of the MS-13 gang, and President Donald Trump has made those same allegations. During an interview, the president held up a photo of Abrego Garcia’s knuckles that were digitally altered to type MS-13 on his fingers.

House Democrats pressed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in May about the doctored photo and she sidestepped questions about whether the photo was real, until she eventually said she was unaware it existed.

She added that even if Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. that he would be immediately deported.

Maryland arguments

In Maryland, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in their complaint they want to ensure he is not deported again.

“This motion does not ask this Court to adjudicate Abrego Garcia’s custodial status in the Tennessee criminal proceedings; that is for the Tennessee district court to resolve,” they wrote.

“Nor does this motion seek to alter any of the conditions of release set by the Tennessee district court or otherwise interfere with the Tennessee criminal proceedings. This motion simply seeks to ensure that when Abrego Garcia is released from criminal custody, he returns to, and remains in, this District (other than to travel to Tennessee as needed), until further order from this Court.”

Abrego Garcia lives with his family in Maryland. “Maryland is where he was on March 12 at the moment his unlawful removal saga began, when ICE agents with ‘no warrant for his arrest and no lawful basis’ arrested him and locked him up at an ‘ICE facility in Baltimore, Maryland,’” the complaint said.

“Returning Abrego Garcia to Maryland implements the Supreme Court’s directive and safeguards this Court’s jurisdiction in this matter,” it added.

Clashes between administration and judges

Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation drew national attention to the Trump administration’s aggressive mass deportations campaign that some judges have found skirted due process rights for immigrants. The White House has clashed with the judicial branch with some frequency over immigration decisions.

The Trump administration this week has, in an unusual move, sued the entire judicial bench of the District Court of Maryland, including Xinis, over a standing order to require a two-day pause for deportations due to a high volume of habeas corpus claims from immigrants challenging their detention in the state. A habeas corpus claim allows immigrants to challenge their detention.

Abrego Garcia has had deportation protections from his home country since 2019, but in March he was arrested in Maryland by federal immigration officials while driving his son home and informed his status had changed. Days later, he was deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, a move the Trump administration admitted was a mistake.

In April, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, but stopped short of requiring it.

For the next two months, administration officials would testify in a Maryland court that Abrego Garcia’s return was out of their hands and up to the government of El Salvador.

Xinis has accused the Trump administration of stonewalling information and is allowing for discovery in the civil case to continue to determine if the Trump administration violated her court order to return Abrego Garcia. 

U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore toured Wisconsin's only the ICE detention facility and demanded answers about the people being targeted for deportation in the state | Official photos

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore contacted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Friday to ask the agency to remove a statement from the top of its website describing Milwaukee resident Ramón Morales Reyes as “this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump.” 

The bizarre accusation that Morales Reyes wrote a letter threatening to kill the president has been disproven, and the man who tried to frame him has confessed to forging the letter.

Yet, on Friday, when Moore visited the ICE detention center in Dodge County, Morales Reyes was still there. And the lurid accusation against him is still prominently featured at the top of the Homeland Security website. In the featured statement, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem thanks the ICE officers who arrested Morales Reyes, promotes the idea that he is a dangerous criminal who poses a grave threat, and promises, “He will remain in ICE custody at Dodge County Jail in Juneau, Wisconsin, pending his removal proceedings.”

Moore held a Zoom press conference after her visit. She described Morales Reyes as a humble, religious man who, incredibly, bears no ill will toward Demetric Scott, the man who has been charged with stabbing and robbing him and who then tried to get him deported so he couldn’t testify as a victim in Scott’s upcoming trial. 

It’s very important that the U.S. government stop spreading misinformation about Morales Reyes and afford him due process, Moore said, not just because of the outrageous injustice of his particular case, but because of what it means more broadly. Morales Reyes is an applicant for a U visa — a type of nonimmigrant status set aside for crime victims who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are cooperating with law enforcement or the government in the investigation and prosecution of crimes.

Scott, the man charged with stabbing Morales Reyes and who has admitted forging the letter that led to his arrest, was trying to short-circuit that cooperation ahead of his trial for a violent armed robbery.

If the government deports Morales Reyes, “it will embolden criminals,” Moore said. It’s critical that the U.S. government protect immigrants who are victims of crimes, like Morales Reyes, because if we don’t, we are abetting the criminals. “That’s the message that we’ll be sending if we deport these individuals,” Moore said. “If you’re some pimp out there, some trafficker, some drug pusher, and you want to find someone to abuse, all you’ve got to do is find an immigrant.”

Coincidentally, on the same Friday afternoon Moore visited Morales Reyes and began her campaign to get the government to stop spreading misinformation about him, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that Trump administration officials were finally bringing back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man they wrongly deported to El Salvador. But, Bondi said, the government is charging Abrego Garcia with a slew of serious crimes including being “a smuggler of humans and women and children.”

We don’t know yet if the federal case against Abrego Garcia will include another ham-fisted attempt to pass off obviously doctored photos of his hands with photoshopped “MS-13”gang tattoos. But the administration that continues to push the discredited claim that Morales Reyes penned a letter threatening to assassinate the president inspires zero trust. 

What a relief, in this awful political climate, to see Moore sticking up for immigrants who are being targeted and terrorized, demanding answers from ICE and doing her best to uphold the rule of law. Moore has also been championing Yessenia Ruano, the beloved Milwaukee teacher’s aid who has a pending application for a T visa as a victim of human trafficking, and has been ordered to self-deport back to El Salvador, where she was victimized. Going back would place her in serious danger and leave her young daughters without a mother. 

“She’s an exceptional asset to the school district where she works, not a threat at all to the community,” Moore said.

A week before her visit with Morales Reyes, Moore was joined by her fellow Wisconsin Democrat, U.S. Rep Mark Pocan, on an unannounced inspection visit to the Dodge County jail, Wisconsin’s only ICE detention facility. Moore went back again Friday because she was initially refused an interview with Morales Reyes.

“We have congressional prerogative to do an unannounced visit” to see what’s going on in ICE detention, Pocan said. “In fact,” he added, “I think [it’s] a requirement, really, morally, to do an unannounced visit to these facilities.” 

When they got to the jail, Pocan and Moore had to explain their oversight prerogative. They presented a letter from the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, and waited an hour to get inside. They expressed appreciation for the sheriff, who let them come in and tour the facility, though they weren’t permitted to talk to any detainees. 

When they tried to contact ICE it was another story. There were no ICE agents present — they only show up to bring in detainees every three weeks, the sheriff told them. When they tried to call the Milwaukee ICE field office, the phone was disconnected. They left messages at the Chicago office that were not returned. Of the roughly 100 immigrant detainees at Dodge, who come from all over the country, they couldn’t find out how many have been arrested in Wisconsin. 

“This is the problem, right?” said Pocan. “ICE treats us all like we don’t deserve to get information, even though we have oversight authority.” 

Part of what bothered Pocan, he said, is “the arrogance that we’ve seen from ICE so far this year.” 

“ICE is acting like they are somehow above the law,” he said, “above lawmakers.” 

It has become abundantly clear that the Trump administration’s rhetoric about targeting dangerous criminals for deportation is utter bunk.

Neither Morales Reyes nor Yessenia Ruano nor Abrego Garcia poses a threat to community safety. The real threat is coming from masked ICE agents terrorizing immigrants and local communities.

We desperately need leaders who will stand up to these terror tactics. That takes guts, as the arrest of Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan showed, as did the Homeland Security agents barging into a congressional office and roughly handcuffing a staffer they accused of letting protesters hide there.

I’m grateful for the courage of Moore and Pocan. 

As they said, if we don’t stand up for the people the Trump administration is targeting now, we will be next.

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A protester holds a photo of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia as demonstrators gather to protest against the deportation of immigrants to El Salvador outside the Permanent Mission of El Salvador to the United Nations on April 24, 2025. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongly deported to his native El Salvador three months ago, was brought back to the U.S. on Friday and will face federal charges, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said.

Abrego Garcia’s case had become a flashpoint in a debate over what due process rights protect immigrants from deportation after federal officials conceded he was sent to a notorious El Salvador mega-prison because of an administrative error. 

Still, President Donald Trump, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Bondi and other administration officials said for months Abrego Garcia could not be released because of criminal conduct they had not publicly produced evidence of.

In a gaggle with reporters on Air Force One Friday night, Trump declined to say whether it was his decision to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., according to White House pool reports.

“He should have never had to be returned,” Trump said. “It’s a disaster.”

Bondi said Friday a federal warrant for Abrego Garcia’s arrest on human trafficking charges compelled his release from the Salvadoran prison system.

“Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice,” Bondi said at a Department of Justice news conference Friday afternoon. “He was a smuggler of humans and women and children.”

The 10-page indictment filed in the Middle District of Tennessee comes after a federal grand jury indicted him on May 21 for allegedly transporting migrants in the U.S. without legal authorization within the country.

Chris Newman, an attorney representing the Abrego Garcia family said at a virtual press event Friday that he remained skeptical of the federal charges lodged at Abrego Garcia.

“I can tell you that we should all treat whatever charges that are being leveled against him with a high degree of suspicion,” Newman said. “We should make sure that he gets a fair (trial) in court because he’s clearly not getting a fair hearing in the court of public opinion.”

Bondi did not detail when the investigation into Abrego Garcia began, but said the federal indictment charges contained “recently found facts.”

“This is what American justice looks like upon completion of his sentence, we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador,” Bondi said.

WKRN in Nashville said Abrego Garcia’s arraignment has been scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday. 

Outcry over due process

Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation to the notorious mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, drew national outcry as the Trump administration clashed with a federal court that ordered the return of the Beltsville man and resisted the U.S. Supreme Court’s order to “facilitate” his return.

Despite the orders, Trump administration officials did not appear to take any public steps to secure Abrego Garcia’s release, and at times seemed to relish their defiance of the courts.

Bondi thanked El Salvador’s government Friday for releasing Abrego Garcia in compliance with the warrant.

The Trump administration has argued in federal court in Maryland for months that Abrego Garcia is in the custody of El Salvador and therefore cannot be returned, despite a $15 million agreement between the U.S. and the Salvadoran government to keep roughly 300 men removed from the U.S. and detained at CECOT. Abrego Garcia had been moved to a different El Salvador prison prior to his release.

Abrego Gacia had deportation protections to his home country of El Salvador since 2019.

He was pulled over by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in March and informed that his immigration status had changed. He was later placed on one of three deportation flights on March 15 to CECOT.

The Trump administration admitted his removal was an “administrative error” but has since alleged that Abrego Garcia was a leader in the MS-13 gang without producing evidence in the federal civil court overseeing the suit challenging his removal.

Maryland U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who traveled to El Salvador to press for Abrego Garcia’s release and return to the U.S., welcomed the news as a victory for due process rights.

“As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights – and the rights of all,” the Maryland Democrat said in a statement. “The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”

William J. Ford contributed to this report.

Minister of Justice and Public Security Héctor Villatoro, right, accompanies Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a tour of the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on March 26, 2025. (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in the District of Columbia on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to allow Venezuelan men removed under an 18th-century wartime law and sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador to have their cases heard in court, though he conceded the logistics of the order would be challenging to sort out.

In a 69-page order, Judge James Boasberg partially granted an injunction to require 137 Venezuelans be given due process. He ruled that they had no chance to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, or the accusation that they are members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

The Trump administration will have until June 11 to put forth a plan for the men removed under the wartime law and sent to the mega-prison known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, to be afforded their due process rights.

“The Government has violated the CECOT Class’s vested right to due process, an infringement that risks inflicting irreparable harm for which the public interest requires a remedy,” Boasberg said. “The question — simply asked but not so simply answered — thus becomes what relief they must obtain for that violation.”

Boasberg said that the Trump administration “plainly deprived these individuals of their right to seek habeas relief before their summary removal from the United States — a right that need not itself be vindicated through a habeas petition.”

He said that even if President Donald Trump lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act and if those subject to the proclamation are members of the Tren de Aragua gang, they must be given a chance to contest the charges.

“This is the critical point —there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT Plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the Government’s say-so.”

“Defendants instead spirited away planeloads of people before any such challenge could be made,” Boasberg continued. “And now, significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.”

Order doesn’t require return

The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case, sought to require the Venezuelans be brought back to the U.S. from El Salvador to challenge their removals. But Boasberg rejected that argument.

Boasberg determined that even though there is a financial agreement between the U.S. and El Salvador to detain the men, they are in the custody of the Salvadoran government.

“While it is a close question, the current record does not support Plaintiffs’ assertion that they are in the constructive custody of the United States,” Boasberg said.

“Even crediting the public statements characterizing the arrangement as outsourcing the U.S. prison system and acknowledging the President’s unofficial assertion of his power to request a release, such comments cannot overcome a sworn declaration from a knowledgeable government official attesting that the CECOT Class’s ongoing detention is a question of Salvadoran law.”

Department of Justice attorneys have used the same reasoning in a separate case to resist the return of the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, despite a U.S. Supreme Court order to “facilitate” the Maryland man’s return to the U.S.

ACLU will be allowed to have input to determine how due process can be afforded to the men at CECOT, Boasberg wrote.

Wednesday’s order is the latest in a months-long dispute between the Trump administration and Boasberg after three planes landed in El Salvador and roughly 300 men were sent to CECOT in mid-March, despite the judge’s temporary restraining order against using the Alien Enemies Act.

Boasberg found probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt for violating his temporary restraining order that ordered the 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.

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.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday, May 16, 2025, that the Trump administration's attempt to deport a group of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law "does not pass muster." (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday kept in place a block on the Trump administration’s efforts to deport 176 Venezuelans in Northern Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

A majority of the justices found that President Donald Trump’s administration violated the due process rights of Venezuelans when the administration tried to deport them from North Texas last month by invoking the 18th-century wartime law. Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.

“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” according to the decision.

The justices did not determine the legality of the Trump administration using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans 14 and older with suspected ties to the gang Tren de Aragua.

On his social media platform, Trump expressed his disapproval of the ruling.

“THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” he wrote on Truth Social.

The justices found that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals “erred in dismissing the detainees’ appeal for lack of jurisdiction,” and vacated that order, sending the case back.

The Trump administration on Monday asked the high court to remove the injunction, arguing that detaining suspected members of Tren de Aragua poses a threat to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and staff.

In a Wednesday response, the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit, warned that if the Supreme Court lifts its injunction, “most of the putative class members will be removed with little chance to seek judicial review.”

In Friday’s order, the justices noted that because the Trump administration has used the Alien Enemies Act to send migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, careful due process is needed.

“The Government has represented elsewhere that it is unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador…where it is alleged that detainees face indefinite detention,” according to the order, noting the wrongful deportation of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.

“The detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty,” the court continued.

Other rulings

On April 18, the ACLU made an emergency application to the high court, asking to bar any removals under the Alien Enemies Act in the Northern District of Texas over concerns that the Trump administration was not following due process.

Several federal judges elsewhere have blocked the use of the wartime law in their districts that cover Colorado, Southern Texas and Southern New York.

A federal judge in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday was the first to uphold the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, but said those accused must have at least three weeks to challenge their removal.

Protesters gather to support Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Judge Hannah Dugan appeared at her arraignment Thursday in Milwaukee’s federal court and pleaded not guilty to charges that she helped a man elude federal agents in the Milwaukee County courthouse earlier this year. 

Dugan was arrested in April and was indicted Tuesday by a grand jury on two counts, concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of proceedings. The charges could carry penalties of six years of prison, years of supervision, and at least $350,000 in fines. 

Dugan appeared with three attorneys, and did not comment to reporters after the hearing was over. Attorneys mentioned in court that a small number of video excerpts have been shared with the defense, but discovery is still ongoing. 

Judge Lynn Adelman has been assigned to preside over Dugan’s jury trial, which was set to start on July 21, with a pretrial hearing July 9. Jury selection is expected to be lengthy and complicated. A motions hearing was set in Judge Nancy Joseph’s court on May 30.

Dugan is accused of escorting a man into a public hallway with access to elevators after federal agents arrived outside her courtroom, where the man, a Mexican immigrant, was having a routine hearing in a misdemeanor battery case.

The agents had an administrative warrant for his arrest, which was not signed by a judge and did not give agents the authority to enter the courtroom. While the agents waited in the hallway outside, Dugan directed the man and his attorney out a side door that exited into the same hallway. The agents saw him leave the room and one rode down the elevator with him before he was arrested later on the street. 

Outside the Milwaukee federal courthouse on Thursday, a crowd of about 200 people gathered, including elected officials, activists and local residents showed up early in the morning to support the circuit court judge. Speakers led chants through a microphone on the courthouse steps.

One person at the rally, Erik Fanning, said that the charges against Dugan feel “preposterous,” and argued that a judge would be knowledgeable about what the law would and would not allow her to do in courtroom situations. 

“As many people in this country have found out, the law can be manipulated in order to serve an interest that’s sometimes more powerful than the law, as we’re seeing right now in this country,” Fanning told Wisconsin Examiner. “And so that’s the fear here with me.”

After her arrest, Dugan was suspended by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and protests erupted in Milwaukee County calling for the charges against her to be dropped.

If the case against Dugan succeeds, “That’s a powerful statement,” Fanning said. “That’s a powerful move in this game that they’re playing with our justice system.”

Shortly after Dugan’s arrest, FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media praising her detention, then deleted the post. 

For Fanning, Dugan’s arrest felt like a “made-for-TV” moment created by the Trump administration. More press attention on Dugan’s arrest and trial validates his own instincts that “this is a watershed moment,” he said.  

“The media should be interested, because it’s a frightening, very important moment,” Fanning said. “Remember who this administration’s leader is. It’s a TV guy. It’s a manipulating the press, and propaganda guy…So everything they do is a TV show.”

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Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at maximum security penitentiary CECOT, or Center for the Compulsory Housing of Terrorism, on April 4, 2025, in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador.. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to lift its own injunction placed last month in the Northern District of Texas to allow for the deportation of a group of Venezuelan nationals under an 18th-century wartime law.

In the Monday filing, the Trump administration stated that the 176 Venezuelans have alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, and are therefore subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that detaining suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang poses a threat to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and staff.

She said that 23 migrants barricaded themselves in the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas. and “threatened to take hostages, and endangered officers.” Reuters sent a drone over the facility, and captured images of the detained men spelling out SOS with their bodies, over fears that they would be sent to El Salvador. 

The Trump administration has removed those subject to the Alien Enemies Act to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

The administration request stems from an April 18 emergency application from the American Civil Liberties Union that asked the high court to bar any removals under the Alien Enemies Act in the Northern District of Texas over concerns that the Trump administration was not following due process.

The justices, in a 7-2 ruling, ordered that while the lower case is before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, “the Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”

Monday’s filing by Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that those Venezuelans subject to the proclamation must be deported because the migrants “have proven to be especially dangerous to maintain in prolonged detention.”

In a Wednesday response, the ACLU warned that if the Supreme Court lifts its injunction, “most of the putative class members will be removed with little chance to seek judicial review.”

“And under the government’s position, courts will lack authority to remedy unlawful removals to the CECOT Salvadoran prison, where individuals could be held incommunicado for the remainder of their lives,” according to the ACLU brief.

In a separate emergency filing that issued a nationwide injunction that barred the Trump administration from invoking the proclamation, the Supreme Court ruled that, for now, the Trump administration can continue to use the Alien Enemies Act.

But the justices unanimously ruled that those who are subject to the wartime law must be given proper due process as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Several federal judges have blocked the use of the wartime law in their districts that cover Colorado, Northern and Southern Texas and Southern New York.

A federal judge in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday was the first to uphold the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, but said those accused must have at least three weeks to challenge their removal.

In court documents, the Trump administration has noted that adequate time for someone to challenge an Alien Enemies Act designation is roughly 12 hours.