Judge says Trump officials have done ‘nothing’ to return wrongly deported man to US despite order
Hugo Lowell
The justice department will have to prove it tried to comply with a federal judge’s order to facilitate the release of Kilmar Ábrego García from a Salvadorian prison, after the Trump administration claimed it was powerless to force the return of the accidentally deported refugee who had legally lived in the US for nearly 25 years.
In a hearing Tuesday, Judge Paula Xinis told DoJ officials to clear their schedules and begin preparing for possible depositions and a discovery process that will take about two weeks, the New York Times reports.
“To date nothing has been done,” Xinis said during the hearing. “Nothing.”
Xinis had ordered the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” Garcia’s return, and is now evaluating whether or not officials are in contempt of court for failing to comply. Garcia’s lawyers will be able to submit up to 15 questions, 15 document requests and depose up to six administration officials in an effort to examine what exactly has been done.
From the Guardian’s White House correspondent, Hugo Lowell:
The US district judge Paula Xinis refuted the administration’s claim that Trump’s news conference with the Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele complied with the court order to ‘facilitate’ the return of Kilmar Ábrego García.
Xinis also rejected the administration’s narrow immigration court reading of “facilitate” to mean officials only had to remove domestic barriers for Ábrego García, saying the plain meaning of the term meant they had to secure his release.”
Key events
The Associated Press has still not been allowed in the White House press pool even after a judge overturned a ban from Trump blocking the news agency, Washington Post media reporter Jeremy Barr said in social media posts. On Tuesday, a print journalist was given access to an event, but “re-joining the pool is still the priority”, he said.
The White House acknowledged the injunction against its ban in a letter Monday but continued to block reporters from events.
The AP was penalized by the president after the organization continued using the name Gulf of Mexico after Trump ordered the body of water be renamed to “Gulf of America.”
From Barr in the Washington Post:
Judge Trevor N. McFadden decided to lift the ban — which had been in place since Feb. 11 — while the AP’s lawsuit against the White House plays out, arguing in a scathing ruling that blocking the news organization’s journalists over a stylebook decision violated their constitutional rights.
He stayed his own ruling for five days to allow an appeal, meaning it expired Sunday. But on Monday, it was as if nothing had changed. The AP was not included in the limited pool of journalists covering the president, as it had been before the ban. And when AP journalists attempted to cover Trump’s Oval Office meeting with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, they were rebuffed.”
A federal judge ruled today that Trump could not bar the federal government from working with Susman Godfrey, the law firm that won a $787bn settlement from Fox News for a voting machine maker over lies aired about the 2020 election.
“The framers of our constitution would see this as a shocking abuse of power,” district court Judge Loren AliKhan said as she issued a temporary restraining order blocking last week’s executive order from the president, according to the Associated Press:
Trump’s order cited the firm’s election work as a reason it was targeted. Several other firms that have been targeted by Trump entered into settlements, promising to provide hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free legal work for the president’s favored causes. Susman and at least three others have chosen to fight and all have so far won in court.”
Sam Levine
Harvard University has retained two notable lawyers as it prepares to fight the Trump administration’s efforts to halt billions in federal funds.
The university sent a letter on Monday to the Trump administration saying it would not acquiesce to the administration’s demands. It was signed by William Burck, a managing partner at the firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and Robert Hur, a partner at the firm King & Spalding.
Hur, a former US attorney in Maryland, served as the special counsel that investigated Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents. While his final report cleared Biden of any wrongdoing, it contained devastating language describing Biden as “an elderly man with a poor memory”.
Burck and his firm have several connections to the Trump administration and allies.
Most recently, Burck reportedly helped broker a widely-criticized deal between Paul Weiss and the White House in which Paul Weiss agreed to provide $40m in pro-bono legal services. The agreement was widely seen as a capitulation to Trump and emboldened him to go after other law firms.
Burck has also represented Steve Bannon and was chosen by the Trump Organization in January to serve as its outside ethics counsel. He also helped lead confirmation efforts for treasury secretary Scott Bessent. He has also represented former White House counsel Don McGahn and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
He also served on the legal team of New York City mayor Eric Adams as he contested corruption charges that were ultimately dropped at the request of the Trump administration. Burck is said to have been involved in helping negotiate that outcome, according to the New York Times.
The day so far
The Trump administration is “looking into” the legality of deporting American citizens to El Salvador if they commit violent crimes. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “It’s a legal question the president is looking into … He would only consider this, if legal, for Americans who are the most violent, egregious, repeat offenders of crime who nobody in this room wants living in their communities.” Yesterday, Donald Trump reaffirmed that he is “all for” deporting naturalized American citizens to El Salvador “if they’re criminals”. Meanwhile at 4pm ET US district judge Paula Xinis will consider her next steps on what she called the Trump administration’s failure to update her on efforts to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who it illegally deported to El Salvador, in an extraordinary case that is quickly spiralling into the most significant stand-off so far between the White House and the judiciary.
Also today, Trump plans to sign a memorandum that the White House said would be aimed at stopping “ineligible aliens” from claiming Social Security benefits. Incidentally, former US president Joe Biden is expected to return to the national stage later today as he delivers his first major post-presidency speech focusing on how Social Security is being threatened by the policies of the Trump administration. Biden is expected to speak in Chicago around 5.45pm local time.
Earlier, the White House said Harvard “should apologize for antisemitism on its campus” as Trump threatened to remove the university’s tax-exempt status. Trump said the school “should be taxed as a political entity” after it refused to cave in to pressure from his administration to adhere to a list of demands including banning face masks, closing its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and cooperating with federal immigration authorities. Trump responded by cutting $2.3bn in federal grants to the university. Barack Obama and Yale faculty members have praised Harvard for setting an example for other higher education institutions to reject federal overreach into its governance practices.
Elsewhere:
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The Trump administration is using personal data normally protected from dissemination to find undocumented immigrants where they work, study and live, often with the goal of removing them from their housing and the workforce, the Washington Post (paywall) reports.
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A federal judge agreed to dismiss a gun charge against a man US attorney general Pam Bondi has called a leader of the MS-13 gang after prosecutors said the Trump administration wanted to deport rather than prosecute him, Reuters reports. US magistrate judge William Fitzpatrick put the order on hold until Friday to allow the man, Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos, 24, to pursue other legal channels to contest what his lawyer warned could be an imminent removal to an El Salvador prison.
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The Trump administration has exempted 47 companies from regulations to curb mercury and air toxics for their coal-fired power plants for two years, according to a list of facilities published by the Environmental Protection Agency. The exemptions list is the latest move by the administration to use executive or emergency orders to immediately shield polluting facilities from compliance with air and water standards tightened by the Biden administration as the EPA undertakes a lengthier process to roll back those rules.
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Robert F Kennedy Jr is facing new demands to release almost $400m allocated by Congress to help low-income US families keep the air conditioning on this summer. The funds are under threat after the staff running a decades old program were fired – as part of the Trump administration’s so-called ‘efficiency’ drive.
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Trump’s plans to expand infrastructure to produce artificial intelligence in the US could face years of delays with the Republican-controlled Texas statehouse poised to pass legislation that imposes regulatory hurdles on data centers.
That’s all from me, Lucy Campbell, for today. My colleague Gabrielle Canon is here to steer you through the rest of the day’s news, so stay tuned.
Trump exempts dozens of coal plants from mercury and air toxics limits
The Donald Trump administration has exempted 47 companies from regulations to curb mercury and air toxics for their coal-fired power plants for two years, according to a list of facilities published by the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday.
Reuters reports that the exemptions list is the latest move by the administration to use executive or emergency orders to immediately shield polluting facilities from compliance with air and water standards tightened by the Biden administration as the EPA undertakes a lengthier process to roll back those rules.
The Biden-era Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) is still in force after the supreme court in October declined to put the rules on hold after a group of mostly Republican states and industry groups led a legal challenge to suspend it.
But Trump issued a proclamation last week detailing that certain stationary sources subject to MATS are exempt from compliance in a bid to revive the coal industry and prolong the life of aging coal power plants.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin the American Lung Association says could cause severe developmental harm. Mercury and other air toxics associated with coal burning raise the risk of asthma attacks, strokes, heart attacks and lung cancer.
The Biden-era rule required constant monitoring of emissions.
Judge to consider Trump administration’s compliance with order over wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Later today, US district judge Paula Xinis will consider her next steps on what she called the Trump administration’s failure to update her on efforts to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who it illegally deported to El Salvador, in an extraordinary case critics say shows the administration may choose to defy unfavorable court orders.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was deported on 15 March despite an order protecting him from removal to El Salvador, is one of several that have sparked concerns that Donald Trump’s administration is willing to disregard the judiciary.
The hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, is due to begin at 4pm ET.
Asked about the case earlier, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration was complying with all court orders. “We’re very confident that every action taken by this administration is within the confines of the law,” she said.
Legal experts said Xinis at the hearing may ask the administration whether it told El Salvador president Nayib Bukele – who met Trump at the White House on Monday – not to release Abrego Garcia, which could amount to defiance of the court’s order to “facilitate” his return.
During the meeting with Bukele on Monday, secretary of state Marco Rubio said: “The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court.” Trump called reporters asking whether the administration would seek the return of Abrego Garcia “sick people.”
Meanwhile, Bukele told reporters at the White House he did not have the power to return Abrego Garcia to the US. “The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele said, echoing the Trump administration’s claim that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which Washington labels a terrorist organization.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have denied he is a gang member, saying the US has presented no credible evidence to support the claim.
US senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said in a statement on Monday that if Abrego Garcia was not home by “midweek,” he would travel to El Salvador to discuss his release. “Since the Trump administration appears to be ignoring these court mandates, we need to take additional action,” Van Hollen said.
Trump to sign memorandum aimed at stopping ineligible people from claiming Social Security benefits
Later today, Trump plans to sign a memorandum that the White House said would be aimed at stopping ineligible people from claiming Social Security benefits, Leavitt says.
Leavitt says:
The memorandum will direct the administration to ensure ineligible aliens are not receiving funds from the Social Security Act programs.
That’s it, the briefing is over.
Asked about Joe Biden’s upcoming speech focused on defending Social Security, Leavitt says:
President Trump is absolutely certain about protecting Social Security benefits for law-abiding, tax-paying, American citizens and seniors who have paid into this program. He will always protect this program.
Relief is being considered for farmers, who face lower prices and high inventories amid the trade war between the US and China.
Leavitt says:
Relief is being considered. The secretary of agriculture, I know, has spoken to the president about that, and again, it’s being considered.
Trump spoke with the sultan of Oman about the next round of Iran talks scheduled for Saturday in Oman, Leavitt says.
Trump’s bottom line in the talks is he wanted to use negotiations to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon, she says.
Trump and the Omani leader also discussed ongoing US operations against Yemen’s Houthis, she says.
‘Harvard should apologize for antisemitism’, says White House
Donald Trump wants to see Harvard apologize, Leavitt says when asked if the president is considering the possibility of removing the school’s tax-exempt status.
When it comes to Harvard, as I said, the president has been quite clear, they must follow federal law. He also wants to see Harvard apologize, and Harvard should apologize for the egregious antisemitism that took place on their college campus against Jewish American students.
Yesterday both Trump and Nayib Bukele said they wouldn’t act on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador.
Asked who is responsible for what happens to him, Leavitt repeats all the key claims of the Trump administration, none of which it has provided evidence for.
[Bukele] is not going to smuggle a foreign terrorist back into the United States of America as many in this room and in the Democrat party seemingly want him to do.
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.
There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who’s going to live a peaceful life in Maryland.
She adds:
I’m not sure what is so difficult about this for everyone in the media to understand. And it’s appalling that there has been so much time covering this … It’s truly striking to me.
