June 4 (UPI) — A federal judge in Maryland on Wednesday ordered seven documents to be unsealed in the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador the government said was an administrative error.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in a five-page opinion, said the records must be publicly available after a request from 14 media organizations. One of the documents will include redactions.
Xinis, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, separately granted a request from Abrego Garcia’s legal team to file a motion by June 11 for sanctions against the Trump administration for not returning their client to the United States.
Xinis, who said in May she would decide on “privilege,” also ordered that a April 30 hearing will be unsealed but include redactions that aim to protect potentially classified information or other sensitive material.
In the April hearing, the judge ordered the Trump administration to comply with expedited discovery to determine whether they were complying with the directive to return Abrego Garcia to the United States, which was upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year.
The government and Abrego Garcia’s attorneys disagree what it means to “facilitate” his return.
Xinis has not decided whether to begin contempt proceedings against the administration.
The judge said media outlets “rightly contend that, at common law, the public enjoys a presumptive right to access court records, overcome only when outweighed by competing interests.”
The Justice Department opposed making the documents public because they are discovery materials typically not available to the press and the public. Also, government lawyers say the sealing protects national security, including sensitive information from being disseminated.
Xinis said “neither withstand scrutiny.”
“The right to public access of court records remains critical to promoting ‘trustworthiness of the judicial process, to curb judicial abuses, and to provide the public with a more complete understanding of the judicial system, including a better perception of fairness,’ ” she wrote Wednesday.
The records are:Abrego Garcia’s attorneys requested discovery on how the Trump administration was facilitating his return from El Salvador. There are three documents related in this matter.Trump administration seeking more time in the discovery proceedings. There are two short documents.Abrego Garcia’s attorneys objecting to the Trump administration’s attempt to pause discovery, some of which is redacted.
Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland since he arrived in the United States in 2011.
Trump officials have repeatedly alleged that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, though formal ties have not been proven. The government cites a confidential informant and says his clothes had with alleged gang markings when he was arrested in 2019.
His attorneys say he has never been charged or convicted of a crime in the United States or El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia was arrested in March and deported to El Salvador to the maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, with a group of more than 230 men, mostly Venezuelans, accused of being gang members. In April, the State Department said Abrego Garica was moved to a lower-security facility in Santa Ana.
The Trump administration has acknowledged that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was a mistake because he had been granted a legal status in 2019. The Department of Homeland Security is banned from removing him to his home country of El Salvador because he was likely to face persecution by local gangs. He didn’t have a hearing before his deportation.
The government has utilized the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime immigration law, to quickly deport migrants from the United States.
Migrants have not been returned to the United States for a hearing on due process despite earlier court orders from Xinis, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and others.
