U.S. navy personnel escort alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang just lately deported by the U.S. authorities to be imprisoned within the Terrorism Confinement Middle (CECOT) jail, as a part of an settlement with the Salvadoran authorities, in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, on this handout picture obtained March 31, 2025.
Secretaria De Prensa De La Presidencia | Through Reuters
The Trump administration confirmed to a federal choose Saturday {that a} Maryland man who was mistakenly deported final month stays confined in a infamous jail in El Salvador.
However the authorities’s submitting didn’t tackle the choose’s calls for that the administration element what steps it was taking to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the USA. The federal government solely stated Garcia is below the authority of the El Salvador authorities.
The administration’s affirmation of Garcia’s location was confirmed to the court docket by Michael G. Kozak, who recognized himself within the submitting as a “Senior Bureau Official” within the State Division’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.
The submitting comes sooner or later after a U.S. authorities lawyer struggled in a listening to to supply U.S. District Choose Paula Xinis with any details about Garcia’s whereabouts. Xinis issued an order after Friday’s listening to requiring the administration to reveal Garcia’s “present bodily location and custodial standing” and “what steps, if any, Defendants have taken (and) will take, and when, to facilitate” his return.
“It’s my understanding based mostly on official reporting from our Embassy in San Salvador that Abrego Garcia is at the moment being held within the Terrorism Confinement Middle in El Salvador,” Kozak’s assertion stated. “He’s alive and safe in that facility. He’s detained pursuant to the sovereign, home authority of El Salvador.”
Kozak’s assertion didn’t tackle the choose’s latter necessities.
Xinis was exasperated Friday with the federal government’s lack of knowledge.
“The place is he and below whose authority?” the choose requested within the listening to. “I am not asking for state secrets and techniques. All I do know is that he is not right here. The federal government was prohibited from sending him to El Salvador, and now I am asking a quite simple query: The place is he?”
