Judge orders the Trump administration to return man who was mistakenly deported | “This was an illegal act,” U.S. Federal District Judge Paula Xinis told Justice Department lawyers

> A federal judge in Maryland Friday ordered the Trump administration to take immediate steps to return a Maryland man who was deported to a Salvadoran mega-prison by mistake, setting up another high-stakes clash between the White House and the courts.

> “This was an illegal act,” U.S. Federal District Judge Paula Xinis told Justice Department lawyers at a federal court hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland about the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who lived in the U.S. legally and had a work permit. Abrego Garcia was arrested and deported last month — despite having been granted protection by an immigration judge in 2019 that should have prevented him from being deported to El Salvador.

> Judge Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, April 7. She said keeping him in El Salvador constitutes irreparable harm.

> “From the moment he was seized, it was unconstitutional,” Judge Xinis said during the hearing. “If there isn’t a document, a warrant, a statement of probable cause, then there is no basis to have seized him in the first place. That’s how I’m looking at it,” the judge said.

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