UPDATE: Abrego Garcia's lawyers have now filed their opposition to DOJ's Fourth Circuit stay request.
excerpt]Chris Geidner
@chrisgeidner.bsky.social
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UPDATE: Abrego Garcia's lawyers have now filed their opposition to DOJ's Fourth Circuit stay request: "[DOJ's] arguments are meritless." https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca4.178258/gov.uscourts.ca4.178258.8.1.pdf
INTRODUCTION
In March 2025, federal agents seized Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia in
Maryland and, as the result of an “administrative error,” removed him to El Salvador,
in undisputed violation of a court order prohibiting his removal to that country.
Abrego Garcia is now being held in a Salvadoran prison solely at the behest of the
United States. He has no criminal record and is not wanted by the Salvadoran
government. None of these facts is disputed.
At Friday’s hearing, the United States1
conceded that he “should not have been
removed,” SA098, and that it did not have a “satisfactory” answer as to why it could
not bring him back, SA114.
2 Yet now it contends that it is powerless to do so and
that an order requiring it to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return—as this Court has
previously ordered the Government to do in other cases—is “intolerable.” Worse,
the Government argues that by defying the prior order not to remove Abrego Garcia
to El Salvador, it has divested the courts of jurisdiction to right this wrong.
These arguments are meritless. There is no basis in this case to stay the
injunction, which simply requires the Government to take routine action to restore
the status quo and preserve Abrego Garcia’s statutory and due process rights.
ALT
April 6, 2025 at 2:05 PM
https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3lm5zvx7ox22t