Greenbelt, Maryland – In a saga that has dragged for four months that feel four years, the Trump administration continues to make Kilmar Abrego Garcia with dilatory tactics and bad faith responses to its investigations. Unlike the challenge in front of your face a few weeks ago, tactics have become a little more subtle and perhaps less obvious for non-avocados, but they are not lost for the American district judge Paula Xinis.
Abrego Garcia being now confronted with criminal charges in Tennessee, the question is no longer whether the government will make it from the imprisonment unjustified in Salvador, but if it will deport it again if it is released from criminal guard – which could arrive next week – while his trial is underway. This is the problem with which Xinis was invited to fight against what was supposed to be a brief audience of evidence that improbable in an unlikely way of yesterday afternoon this morning. Xinis has not yet ruled on the requests of Abrego Garcia, in particular that he and his lawyers are informed of 72 hours before he was transferred to a third country and that in the meantime, he returned to Maryland, where he lived before he was moved to the Salvador in violation of an immigration judge order. A decision by Xinis is imminent.
I want to look beyond the ultimate fate of Abrego Garcia with more important questions than the case raises on the rule of law. His case presents deep and unanswered questions as to whether the Trump administration can and will be held to take into account the cheeky defeat of judicial orders, giving the judge to run, advancing legal and contradictory legal arguments, shaking the opposite side during the discovery and using MJ lawyers to protect the government’s officials from the court control. While the treatment with the administration of Abrego Garcia, who has been wrongly detained in Cecot in Salvador for about 10 weeks, was odious, his conduct in court was also obvious.
A constantly evolving distribution of MJ lawyers
Let’s start with the DOJ lawyers in the case. After the Doj Trump at the start, the career prosecutor Erez Reveni for having been too frank with the court, the majority of the working hours in the case was carried out by politicians, itself unusual and unprecedented on this scale and at this frequency before the second presidency of Trump. In addition to this, the DoJ sent a constantly evolving distribution of the appointments to the courts before the courts, not only by reducing the quality of the lawyer, but by making it difficult for the judge to take them to account for their previous representations and insurance.
During three days of audiences this week, a merry -go -round of DOJ lawyers returned. A new MJ lawyer named Bridget O’hickey arrived at an audience in the case on Monday and managed about half of the government’s argument but only appeared in the case on Wednesday. O’hickey only started working at the Ministry of Justice until May, according to his LinkedIn profile; The Abrego Garcia affair started in March.
Another new face on Thursday appeared at the government’s table table. Sarmad M. Khojashteh joined the Doj in April, according to his LinkedIn profile, and had had no prior involvement in the Abrego Garcia case, at least not in the file. But he was suddenly been a main lawyer for the government over two days of audiences, during which he often attracted the judge’s anger by eating the history of the case.
Maryland judge Xinis highlighted the CAVALCADE of MJ lawyers, with a pie, but asients on the bench like: “I’m sure you have read everything in the case.” The rotating door of the MJ lawyers seems clearly intended to reconstruct the exhausted offer of the benefit of doubt and the personal capital spent by previous lawyers. He also made Xinis more difficult to limit the government.
A witness to the government without personal knowledge of the case
But most of the conduct of bad faith in the last two days implied the witness that the government has put on the stand after Xinis ordered him to present to an official a personal knowledge of the Abrego Garcia case who could answer questions about what the government intends to do with him if he is released in the Tennessee.
The government called Thomas Giles, a career ice official who is now an interim deputy director for application and dismissal operations, a relatively high position. But while ABREGO GARCIA’s lawyers quickly pursued themselves, Giles had had no involvement in the Abrego Garcia case before Tuesday morning, when he received the notifier that he would be witness to the designated government.
It only worsened from there. Pressed by the lawyer for Abrego Garcia Sascha N. Rand to explain what he had done to prepare his testimony, Giles admitted to having read an executive summary of a page and a half of the case that had been prepared for him, making a quick search for his emails, and examining new ice policies on third -party moves. Giles confirmed that apart from government lawyers, he had not spoken to any other civil servant inside or outside the ice involved in the Abrego Garcia case to update himself.
“I have no personal knowledge of the case,” said Giles at some point, before trying to rally. “But I have acquired this knowledge in the last two days.”
In short, it has become obvious that Giles had no personal knowledge of the Abrego Garcia affair despite the order of Xinis that the government produces such a witness.
“He did not call anyone,” said Judge Xinis later. “He hasn’t read anything.”
Giles did not even know the broader policy of the moves of third countries, the process for which the judge was trying to understand so that it could anticipate what could happen to Abrego Garcia next week. After a convoluted and convoluted testimony of Giles on his understanding of the functioning of third -party moves, he conceded: “I have very little experience with the country’s moves. I haven’t dealt with anyone for 18 years. “
The lack of familiarity of Giles with the case and the general obsession led to what was supposed to have been, according to the judge, an hearing of about an hour in a version of four hours of circular and non -reactive responses and multiple interventions by the judge to try to apply to the Abrego of standard ice policy, which it is now, and if it will be applied to Abrego Garcia.
“I don’t have much faith that I understand exactly what’s going on,” said Xinis later.
It was a less dramatic but effective parallel with the myriad of other obstacles that the administration erected in the previous phases of Stonewall. This left Xinis with “serious concerns about what I heard today and what will happen to Mr. Abrego Garcia,” she said at the end of the testimony on Thursday.
‘The proof is not credible’
The non -responsive testimony of Giles prepared the ground for the arguments on Friday morning arguments on the emergency motion of Abrego Garcia to request a notice of 72 hours before it is transferred to a third country and its return to Maryland while its trial is unanswered. Xinis arrived in a sour mood on what she had heard from Giles and the conduct of the government, at some point, calling a government argument “an insult to my intelligence”.
He went from there for the lawyer of the new Doj in case Sarmad M. Khojashteh.
“You assert the applicant’s point of view,” Xinis intervened during his argument. “The fact is the total refusal of your client to engage in a conversation on what will happen on Wednesday despite the extraordinary circumstances of this affair.”
In the bench comments, Xinis confirmed that she had little confidence in the testimony of Giles and that she had undermined rather than strengthening the government’s position. “The evidence is not credible,” said Xinis. “It’s insufficient and incredible.”
Xinis was particularly exasperated by the government’s repeated statements of the government – made dozens of times – that the fate of Abrego Garcia next week would be left to a low level case agent still to be determined and that this officer will not even start to think about what he has to do with Abrego Garcia until he is transferred from criminal guard in the ice custody.
“This defies the reality that it will be left to an office officer,” Xinis told Khojashteh. “And the more you press that, the more I am concerned.”
The underlying concern of Xinis is that the Abrego Garcia affair was clearly treated at the highest levels of the Trump administration, including at the office and the White House. His efforts to determine who has made decisions and to obtain testimonies from the administration officials with direct knowledge of these decisions has mainly failed in the past four months. Instead, he was given witnesses who cannot speak of personal knowledge. The appointments of the DoJ – rarely the same twice – especially took the success reserved for administration officials.
In this context, the idea that there is no plan for what to do then with Abrego Garcia seemed absurd. And judge Xinis called him: “Now you will see me believe that an office officer will be a quarter-Arrière where Mr. Abrego Garcia goes and what they do.”
On the basis of his comments in court, Xinis seemed most likely to make an order effectively blocking administration for at least a short period of moving from Abrego Garcia to a distant location in the United States or in a third country. His remarks reported that during the case, Xinis’ skepticism has matured in full disbelief: “If the past is a prologue, Mr. Abrego Garcia will be moved … and before we know it, he is on a plane and I lost the jurisdiction.”
