Fourth Circuit OKs inquiry into Trump's efforts to return wrongfully deported Maryland man

Source: Courthouse News Service

WASHINGTON (CN) — In a sharp rebuke on Thursday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s request to further delay an inquiry into the wrongful deportation of a Maryland father.

The unanimous three-judge panel ruling chastised the Justice Department for evading court-mandated action to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Maryland resident, to the U.S. after he was accidentally deported to an El Salvadoran prison last month. The appeals panel said that instead of working to correct its mistake, the government was tearing down the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans hold dear.

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” U.S. Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.”

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis held a status hearing on the government’s efforts to release Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. Xinis similarly censured the Trump administration for doing nothing to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, ordering a two-week probe into the government's efforts.

Read more: https://www.courthousenews.com/fourth-circuit-clears-way-for-inquiry-into-wrongfully-deported-maryland-man/