Kilmar Abrego Garcia team wants Trump officials' depositions
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Inset: Kilmar Abrego Garcia in updated photo (CASA). Background: President Donald Trump converses with reporters while signing executive orders and proclamations in the Oval Office at the White House, Monday, May 5, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).

Lawyers representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who acknowledges he was “wrongfully” deported to El Salvador against court directives, are urging the presiding judge to abolish what they describe as ongoing clandestine practices.

In a 31-page memorandum of law concerning privilege claims, the attorneys are appealing to U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to dismiss objections that enable the Trump administration to handle issues confidentially without the other party present and to file documents in secrecy.

The passage of time and the government’s admissions loom large in the heavily-redacted effort to bring transparency to the case.

The filing begins by noting that a “full month has passed since” the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that Abrego Garcia “was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal.”

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“Yet Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador, and the Government has produced no evidence showing that it has made the slightest effort to facilitate his release,” the memo reads. “To the contrary, the President has insisted on national television that, although he has the power to bring Abrego Garcia back, he won’t, because his lawyers have advised him against it.”

In late April, in response to a question from ABC News, President Donald Trump said he “could” just pick up the phone and have the Salvadoran president return Abrego Garcia to the United States. But, Trump added, “we have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”

One of 19 attachments to the plaintiff’s filing — inclusive of 18 exhibits and one declaration — contains a brief transcript and write-up of Trump’s comments to ABC News anchor Terry Moran.

And that admission, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys say, flies in the face of the government’s efforts to otherwise maintain secrecy in court.

This juxtaposition comes as part of an ongoing bid to force the Trump administration into complying with discovery about “the truth as to the Government’s efforts (or lack thereof) as well as its abilities to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.” This, the plaintiffs insist, is “the essential issue” in the case.

“Over and over, the Government has stonewalled Plaintiffs by asserting unsupported privileges — primarily state secrets and deliberative process — to withhold written discovery and to instruct witnesses not to answer even basic questions,” the memo goes on. “Even as the Government speaks freely about Abrego Garcia in public, in this litigation it insists on secrecy.”

The attorneys argue the state secrets privilege is clearly not implicated by any of the facts in a case about “a single mistakenly removed individual” who is simply trying to get flown back to the United States “so that he can get his day in court.”

“No military or intelligence operations are involved,” the memo continues, “and it defies reason to imagine that the United States’ relationship with El Salvador would be endangered by any effort to seek the return of a wrongfully deported person who the Government admits never should have been removed to El Salvador in the first place.”

Aside from the basic thrust of the state secrets claim, the plaintiffs say the government has not even properly invoked the privilege.

Under relevant Supreme Court precedent from Global War on Terrorism cases, the memo notes, the privilege has to be invoked by department heads “based on actual personal consideration.”

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