The Trump administration is appearing for a court hearing this afternoon in front of the judge who ordered the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man deported to a prison in El Salvador despite an earlier ruling saying he must not be sent back to his home country over concerns about his safety.
President Trump and his Cabinet officials are digging in, insisting there's no way to force Garcia's return.
In a court filing Monday, the administration pointed to remarks by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who said at an Oval Office meeting he would not send Garcia back to the U.S.
"DHS does not have the authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation," Joseph Mazzara, the acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, wrote to Judge Paula Xinis.
Attorneys for Garcia swung back, accusing the Trump administration of disregarding the 9-0 Supreme Court ruling saying they must "facilitate" Garcia's return.
"To give any meaning to the Supreme Court's order, the Government should at least be required to request the release of Abrego Garcia," Garcia's lawyers wrote. "To date, the Government has not done so."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called on Xinis to hold administration lawyers in contempt of court, which is one possible outcome of Tuesday's hearing.
"We're very confident that every action taken by this administration is within the confines of the law," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called it a "Constitutional crisis."
The White House is furious over what they see as media coverage that is sympathetic to the plight of Garcia, who has lived in the U.S. for years.
"The Democrat and media outrage over the deportation of Abrego Garcia, an MS-13 El Salvadoran illegal alien criminal who was hiding in Maryland, has been northing short of despicable," Leavitt said Tuesday. "Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room you'd think we deported a candidate for father of the year."
"There was never going to be a world where this is an individual who was going to live a peaceful life in Maryland," she added.
Garcia's lawyers say he was not in a gang, not part of a foreign terrorist organization and not involved in human trafficking, as the White House alleges, although an immigration judge at one point acknowledged there may be evidence of gang affiliation.
Attorney General Pam Bondi disparaged media accounts of Garcia that describe him as a "Maryland man."
"He's not a Maryland man," Bondi said. "He's part of a foreign terrorist organization."
The White House on Tuesday also dug in on Trump's musings about sending U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to the prison in El Salvador. Leavitt said the administration is "looking into" whether that would be legal.
"He'd 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," she said.
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