Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in the U.S. and facing criminal charges, but his lawyers are still trying to keep alive the civil case that prompted his return. The Trump administration argues the civil case is now moot, but Abrego’s lawyers say it’s not that simple.
One of the reasons the lawyers cite is the potential for contempt sanctions against the government for its conduct in the case, which has been one of the most high-profile examples in President Donald Trump’s second term of his administration resisting court orders in service of his immigration agenda.
“A court retains jurisdiction to enforce its own orders and to impose sanctions and contempt,” they wrote to U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered Abrego’s return in April. Opposing the government’s dismissal motion, they wrote Monday that the government “has violated several orders of this Court, including discovery orders and the preliminary injunction” that Xinis issued for his return.
They also cited the new whistleblower claims from a former Justice Department lawyer that emerged ahead of DOJ official Emil Bove’s judicial confirmation hearing last week. Allegations of government misconduct from that lawyer, Erez Reuveni, touched on several high-profile cases including Abrego’s. In their motion Monday, Abrego’s lawyers highlighted a passage from Reuveni’s whistleblower letter that said, “It has been the prior practice going back years in situations where DHS removed someone in error to seek to resolve cases without further litigation by correcting the error.”
Of course, that’s not what happened here in the case of Abrego, whom the government sent to a Salvadoran mega-prison in March despite a court order preventing his removal to that country at all, much less to any prison without having been charged with or convicted of any crime. As his lawyers recounted in their filing to Xinis: “[A]fter months of openly resisting orders of this Court, the Fourth Circuit, and the Supreme Court, the Government finally returned Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States from El Salvador, but not to Maryland where he resides and which was the status quo ante before his illegal arrest and removal.”
So in addition to potential sanctions, the lawyers say the civil case in Maryland isn’t moot because Xinis can still order Abrego’s return to Maryland specifically. The government didn’t return him there, but rather sent him to Tennessee to face criminal charges that the government developed while he was in El Salvador. Abrego is charged with illegally transporting undocumented immigrants; he pleaded not guilty.
There has been separate litigation in Tennessee over his possible release from criminal custody, but the government says it intends to hold him in immigration custody even if he’s released from criminal custody, given its intention to deport him again.
Abrego’s lawyers cite that stated deportation intention to argue that it’s further reason to keep the civil case going. That’s relevant, they said, because Xinis can still make an official finding that Abrego’s removal to El Salvador “was unlawful and remains unlawful.”
So while there are multiple moving parts in the litigation between the criminal and potential immigration spheres, the Maryland civil case that started it all could still play a role in what happens next in the litigation and how it ends.
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This article was originally published on MSNBC.com