Judge in Abrego Garcia case indicates she’s weighing contempt proceedings against Trump administration – NBC Los Angeles

The judge presiding over the case of a man who was mistakenly deported by the U.S. government to a prison in El Salvador suggested Tuesday that she was weighing contempt proceedings against the Trump administration.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered administration officials to turn over evidence of their efforts to help bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. since she first ordered them to “facilitate” his return, saying the government had not shown her anything of note on that front.

“I’ve gotten nothing,” Xinis said. “I’ve gotten no real response, and no real legal justification for not answering,” she continued, adding that if the administration is not going to answer her questions “then justify why. That’s what we do in this house.”

Attorneys for Abrego Garcia had asked that the administration be found in contempt of court over its inaction. The judge said she wants to review the evidence the administration submits, which is expected to include sworn depositions, before ruling on the matter.

She ordered officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to sit for the depositions, and for the administration to hand over documents by the end of the month to see what steps its taken to comply with her order.

In a written order after the hearing, Xinis said that if the administration does not comply with that part of her order, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers “are free to seek separate sanctions on an expedited basis.”

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Speaking for the administration, Drew Ensign of the Justice Department said during the hearing that the government had complied with the judge’s previous directives. He also said that if Abrego Garcia were to show up at a port of entry, we “would facilitate his return” into the U.S. before taking him into custody.

Abrego Garcia was deported on March 15 and taken to a notorious prison in El Salvador, despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order barring him from being sent to his home country. Government lawyers have said he was taken there as the result of an “administrative error.”

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Beltsville, Maryland, father, was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, ICE admits. News4 takes a deep dive into what happened and what could be next.

Xinis previously ordered the administration to try to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., where he could be given due process.

The Supreme Court partially affirmed her order last week, saying Abrego Garcia’s removal was “illegal” and that Xinis’ order “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

During an Oval Office meeting Monday between President Donald Trump and President Nayib Bukele, the Salvadoran president told a reporter that he wouldn’t send Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., calling the question “preposterous.”

None of the U.S. officials present at the meeting publicly asked that he be returned, something the judge pointed to Tuesday when Ensign tried to use the meeting as evidence of the U.S. government’s efforts to comply with her earlier order.

Xinis pointed out that a reporter had asked Bukele the question, and that administration officials didn’t respond to questions about what steps they’d taken to secure Abrego Garcia’s return.

In her written order, the judge questioned why Abrego Garcia was still “inexplicably detained” in prison. While the government has said he’s being detained “pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador,” the “record thus far demonstrates that the United States had paid six-million dollars to house those detainees in custody ‘pending the United States’ decision on their long-term disposition.’”

She went on to say that his lawyers could seek answers as to “who authorized his initial placement there and who presently authorizes his continued confinement.”

Rina Gandhi, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, said Tuesday’s hearing marked “progress.”

“This case isn’t about whether Abrego Garcia is a ‘terrorist:’ This case is about the government unlawfully, and admitting to unlawfully, removing a gentleman from this country, from Maryland, from his home, his family, his his children, and taking no actions, no meaningful steps to fix them, as ordered by the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision,” she said outside the courthouse.

Ahead of Monday’s Oval Office meeting, Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, denied any mistake was made in deporting Abrego Garcia and argued he was able to be legally removed because he’s a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which Trump has labeled a foreign terrorist organization.

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia have denied that he’s a gang member, and Xinis has questioned the evidence the immigration judge used years earlier to make that determination. She noted in a ruling that he has no criminal record in the U.S. or El Salvador, and that the “‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived.”

The White House, however, has doubled down on those allegations, without providing any evidence to support the claims.

“Abrego Garcia was a foreign terrorist. He is an MS-13 gang member. He was engaged in human trafficking. He illegally came into our country, and so deporting him back to El Salvador was always going to be the end result,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday.

Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, offered a different view of her husband, who she said had “dedicated himself to making our family’s American dream come true.”

She urged her husband to stay strong before the hearing, which she attended.

“Kilmar, if you can hear me, stay strong. God hasn’t forgotten about you. Our children are asking, when would you come home? And I pray for the day,” she said.

Trump was asked in a Fox Noticias interview that aired Tuesday about whether Abrego Garcia would be returned to the U.S..

“That’s really a decision that will be made by the government of El Salvador,” he said.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News: