Judge Signals She Will Protect Abrego Garcia From Hasty Second Deportation

A frustrated federal judge signaled on Friday that she would issue an order protecting Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, from being hastily expelled from the United States again after he was brought back last month to face criminal charges.

The suggestion by Judge Paula Xinis, who is handling the original civil case emerging from the wrongful deportation, came during a hearing in Federal District Court in Maryland where she exploded at the Justice Department for having badly damaged the bonds of trust that are normally afforded by the courts to lawyers for the government.

“This has been the process from Day 1,” said Judge Xinis, who in the past several months has chided the administration over and over for how it has handled Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case. “You have taken the presumption of regularity and you’ve destroyed it in my view.”

Expressing their own frustrations, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have asked Judge Xinis at a series of hearings this week to give them the chance to challenge any efforts by the Trump administration to re-deport their client if he is released from custody in his criminal case and handed over to immigration officials.

The lawyers want Judge Xinis to bar the administration from beginning removal proceedings for two or three business days if Mr. Abrego Garcia is freed from criminal custody, which could happen as early as Wednesday, when there is a separate hearing in his criminal case in Nashville.

While the Justice Department initially vowed to take Mr. Abrego Garcia to trial on charges of immigrant smuggling filed against him in Nashville, department lawyers have more recently indicated that the Department of Homeland Security would seek to re-deport him before a trial took place — perhaps to a third country where he has never lived.