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. 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.  

Maryland Democratic U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents the district where Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife live, led the chant “bring him home” outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland shortly before a hearing in Abrego Garcia’s case on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

GREENBELT, MARYLAND — A federal judge said Friday the Trump administration has “pretty broadly” invoked the state secrets privilege to withhold information on its efforts — or, the judge indicated, a possible lack of effort — to return a wrongly deported Maryland man from a prison in El Salvador.

President Donald Trump’s administration moved last month to invoke the so-called state secrets privilege to shield information about its process to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States after a top immigration official admitted his removal to a prison in El Salvador was an “administrative error.”

The judge handling the case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, granted an expedited discovery process after she found last month that “nothing has been done” by the administration to return Abrego Garcia.

She did not make a public order regarding the state secrets privilege Friday afternoon before closing her courtroom to the public to discuss sensitive matters with attorneys for Abrego Garcia and the Department of Justice.

The state secrets privilege is a common-law doctrine that protects sensitive national security information from being released. The Trump administration has argued the need to invoke it in this case to protect diplomatic relationships.

‘He’ll never walk free in the United States’

During the public portion of Friday’s hearing, Xinis pressed the Department of Justice attorneys about Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s comment that Abrego Garcia “will not return” to the U.S.

“That sounds to me like an admission that your client will not take steps to facilitate the return,” Xinis said. “That’s about as clear as it can get.”

DOJ attorney Jonathan D. Guynn disagreed and said the Trump administration is complying with court orders. He said Noem’s comment meant that if Abrego Garcia was back in U.S. custody he would be removed either to another third country or back to El Salvador.

“He’ll never walk free in the United States,” Guynn said.

He added that the Trump administration is “currently complying and we plan to comply.”

Xinis said she disagreed, and then she clashed with Guynn over the legality of Abrego Garcia’s removal.

Guynn said that he was lawfully deported.

Xinis answered that she found months ago that Abrego Garcia was unlawfully detained and removed from the U.S.

Few documents produced

One of the attorneys for Abrego Garcia, Andrew J. Rossman, said the Trump administration has invoked the state secrets privilege for 1,140 documents relating to the case. From that request, Rossman said his team received 168 documents, but 132 were copies of court filings and requests made by him and his team.

Xinis seemed visibly stunned by Rossman’s report and had to clarify that his team had only received 36 new documents, which Rossman confirmed.

Rossman said that none of the documents for which the government is invoking the state secrets privilege are classified.

“There’s ways to do this right, and they haven’t done it,” he said, noting that he has attorneys on his team who have security clearances and can review classified and sensitive information.

Rossman said that he and his team are seeking answers to three questions: the status of Abrego Garcia, what steps the Trump administration has taken, if any, to facilitate his return, and the steps the federal government will take, if any, to comply with court orders.

Guynn said the Trump administration received an update from El Salvador on Thursday that Abrego Garcia was in “good health” and had “even gained weight.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.

Rossman, said that it’s “deeply disturbing” that administration officials, including the president, have made public statements that contradict court orders directing the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.

President Donald Trump has said he could easily pick up the phone and order El Salvador to return him but won’t because he believes Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang.

Noem was pressed at a May 14 congressional hearing about a photo that appears altered to add letters across Abrego Garcia’s knuckles to indicate his inclusion in the gang. She said she was unaware of it.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia, in a separate case regarding Trump’s use of an archaic wartime law for deportations, questioned Department of Justice attorneys on the president’s claim that he could order Abrego Garcia to be returned. The attorney admitted that the president sometimes overstates his influence abroad.

El Salvador prison

Abrego Garcia has had protections from deportation since 2019, but he was one of nearly 300 men on three mid-March removal flights to a notorious prison in El Salvador known as CECOT.

Abrego Garcia has been moved to a lower security prison, according to Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who traveled to the country last month to meet with Abrego Garcia and inquire with Salvadoran officials about why he is being held there.

Those officials said Abrego Garcia was being held because of the agreement between the United States and El Salvador.

The U.S. has a $15 million agreement with El Salvador’s government to house immigrants removed from the U.S., mostly Venezuelans removed under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The Trump administration has argued that Abrego Garcia is a national of El Salvador and in that country’s custody and the U.S. cannot force another government to return him. 

Hours before Friday’s hearing, dozens of protestors gathered outside the court, calling for Abrego Garcia to be returned to the U.S., as well as criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. 

U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents the area in Maryland where Abrego Garcia and his family live, appeared outside the court and led chants calling for the release of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador.

“The president has to obey the orders of the Supreme Court,” Ivey said. “The Supreme Court has spoken here, and it’s time for him to follow it and bring him home.”