Judges’ Dilemma

Lawyers for the federal government are saying some astonishing things in court. Yesterday, in a Maryland courtroom, a deputy assistant attorney general told a judge that the government is following her order to facilitate the return of a mistakenly deported Maryland man. If the man were to show up at a port of entry, the lawyer said, the government would not turn him away.

The problem is the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, has no way to get to the border on his own. He has been held in a brutal prison in El Salvador since mid-March — because the government deported him there by mistake. Yesterday, the judge rebuked the government for doing nothing to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

Scenes like this have played out in courtrooms around the country since President Trump took office. Defending the deportations of more than 200 Venezuelans to the same Salvadoran prison last month, the same deputy assistant attorney general told a judge that the government had complied with his order to turn flights around in the air. “It seems to me that there is a fair likelihood that that is not correct,” said the judge in that case, James Boasberg, “and in fact, that the government acted in bad faith.”

Government lawyers called off the prosecution of New York’s mayor by saying he couldn’t enforce immigration laws while the charges were pending (even though he was clearly doing so). They also said the E.P.A. was rife with fraud and criminality but couldn’t come up with any proof.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how the administration’s lawyers have created a conundrum for the judiciary.

The Maryland case

In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that Abrego Garcia, who had come to the U.S. from El Salvador, should not be sent back because there was a risk that gang members there might torture or kill him. But last month, by the government’s own admission, it deported him by accident.