Left: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland and deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, speaks in a hotel restaurant in San Salvador, El Salvador, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Press Office Senator Van Hollen, via AP). Right: President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after arriving on Air Force One, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The Maryland federal judge who ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia's release from ICE detention and slammed the government for "affirmatively" misleading the court in the habeas case is herself responsible for "clear legal errors," according to the Trump administration.
In a 13-page filing urging U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to lift two injunctions, one from August 2025 and the other from February 2026, the DOJ asserted Friday that the Barack Obama-appointed jurist is the only person standing in the way of Abrego Garcia's removal from the United States to West Africa.
Specifically, the government claimed that Xinis created the delay she then used to order Abrego Garcia's release from custody, while also barring the government twice over from removing him to a third country.
"The Court cannot both impose the impediment that delays removal and consequently prolongs detention and, at the same time, hold that the resulting detention is impermissibly prolonged," the filing said, taking aim at Xinis' "clear legal errors" to keep Abrego Garcia in the country and free from detention.
The Trump administration represented that it is "willing" and "able" to remove the already wrongly deported Salvadoran man to Liberia.
"This Court should dissolve the active injunctions […] as both rest on clear legal errors and neither is equitable when applied prospectively. Dissolution is warranted as a factual matter based on the declaration submitted as Exhibit A to this motion, which establishes that the United States government presently stands ready, willing, and able to remove Petitioner to Liberia, and the only impediment to Petitioner's removal is the Court's injunction barring Petitioner's removal," the filing went on.
What followed was a complaint about Xinis' decision to leave the government's dissolution motion pending "for months" on end, claiming the judge "failed to acknowledge that the Court's own prior injunction against removal is the sole impediment to Petitioner's prompt removal." The government framed that as an inexplicable about-face, considering the judge "invited the government to move to dissolve the injunction barring Petitioner's removal when it was ready to effectuate the removal" of Abrego Garcia.
"This Court committed clear legal error by not recognizing the impact of its own preliminary injunction barring Plaintiff's removal," the DOJ added.
As Law&Crime reported in December, Xinis ruled that the Trump administration held Abrego Garcia "without lawful authority" and "affirmatively misled" the court on Costa Rica's willingness to accept him as a refugee. While the government had floated its intentions to deport Abrego Garcia to various African countries, whether Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, or Liberia, the petitioner expressed a willingness to self-deport to Costa Rica.
The judge then ripped the administration for "their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia[.]"
In the present day, the DOJ contends that it is prepared to send the petitioner to Liberia and that Xinis' orders are the lone roadblock to an "extremely expeditious" removal.
"The Court's orders barring Petitioner's removal and barring any brief detention incident to removal are the only impediment to Petitioner's immediate removal. It is clearly erroneous, and a manifest injustice, to permit a petitioner to manufacture a legal obstacle to his removal and then hold that that legal obstacle suffices to prevent detention pending removal," the DOJ said, seeking a ruling by April 17.
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