Judge Orders Daily Updates on Trump Administration’s Efforts to Retrieve Wrongly Deported Man

A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump Administration to submit daily updates on its efforts to bring back Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland man mistakenly deported to an El Salvadoran prison last month, a day after the Supreme Court ruled the Administration must “facilitate” his return.

The extraordinary demand by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis underscores mounting judicial frustration with what many legal observers view as a pattern of defiance from the White House—and deepens concerns that a long-feared constitutional crisis may now be underway.

Judge Xinis issued the directive during a tense hearing in Greenbelt, Md., where a Justice Department attorney repeatedly declined to provide even the most basic information about Abrego García’s whereabouts or status. “I am asking a very simple question: Where is he?” the judge asked, according to CNN. “There is no evidence today as to where he is today,” she later remarked. “That is extremely troubling.”

Xinis is requiring the government to file a sworn statement every day from an official with personal knowledge of the situation, detailing Abrego García’s location, his custodial status, and what steps—if any—are being taken to secure his return. “Even if the answer is that the government has no information, I want that on the record,” she said, according to CNN.

Read More: What the Venezuelans Deported to El Salvador Experienced

The case has become a flashpoint in a broader battle over executive power, immigration enforcement, and the independence of the judiciary. Last week, Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego García by Monday at midnight, but Trump officials have contended that they have no power to return a man in custody of a foreign government. The Supreme Court weighed in Thursday night, ruling unanimously that the Trump Administration must “facilitate” Abrego García’s return, but it stopped short of ordering the government to “effectuate” his return—which Xinis had ordered. That distinction has become central to the Administration’s defense. 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt emphasized at Friday’s press briefing “that it’s the Administration’s responsibility to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return,” raising the question of how far the Administration will go to return Abrego García—and how quickly it would begin negotiations. “We very much appreciate President Bukele and El Salvador’s cooperation and the repatriation of Salvadorian gang members who the previous Administration allowed to infiltrate our country,” Leavitt added. Bukele is scheduled to visit the White House on Monday.

But legal experts say the Administration’s continued refusal to comply fully with the courts suggests a broader erosion of constitutional norms. The Supreme Court’s ruling, though a procedural win for Abrego García’s legal team, left ample room for executive branch discretion, noting that any further judicial orders must show “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” The Trump Administration has seized on that language to argue that judges cannot compel the President to negotiate with a foreign government.

Still, multiple lower courts have rejected the Administration’s arguments. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found unanimously that federal courts retain jurisdiction in the case, and Judge Xinis has been unambiguous in her condemnation of the government’s conduct. “The act of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was wholly illegal from the moment it happened,” she wrote in a recent order.

Abrego García, 29, was deported on March 15 despite a standing immigration court ruling from 2019 barring his removal to El Salvador due to credible threats from gangs targeting his family’s pupusa business. The government has since admitted his removal was an “administrative error,” but has argued that it cannot now be compelled to bring him back—an argument dismissed by the Supreme Court’s liberal justices as both factually incorrect and legally dangerous.

In a separate opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and two colleagues wrote that the Administration’s position implies it could deport and imprison “any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.”

Further complicating matters are government allegations—unsupported by charges or public evidence—that Abrego García is affiliated with the MS-13 gang. The immigration judge who halted his removal in 2019 found no credible evidence to support that claim, and his attorneys insist he has no criminal record and was a legal worker pursuing a journeyman license in Maryland. “The government has made no effort to demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is, in fact, a member of any gang,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanie Thacker.

The Administration’s conduct in this case has alarmed many legal scholars, who see it as part of a troubling pattern. In multiple high-profile cases, the Trump Administration has openly resisted or slow-walked compliance with court orders. “The checks and balances are gone,” Kim Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and a former assistant U.S. attorney, told TIME last month.