A federal judge in Maryland scolded Trump administration lawyers on Tuesday for waiting until the eleventh hour to seek an extension in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadorian migrant and alleged MS-13 member deported to El Salvador in what officials have acknowledged was an administrative error.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis denied the Justice Department’s 30-day extension request, noting that Trump administration lawyers waited until “the very day” their response was due to file. She also said they “expended no effort in demonstrating good cause” to comply with her earlier orders.
“They vaguely complain, in two sentences, to expending ‘significant resources’ engaging in expedited discovery,” Xinis said of the government’s efforts. “But these are burdens of their own making.”
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She also noted the number of times the administration has delayed submitting information in the case despite the fact the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration this year to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.
“The court has conducted no fewer than five hearings in this case and at no point had defendants even intimated they needed more time to answer or otherwise respond,” Xinis said, adding that the defendants are “intimately familiar with the causes of action and of the pending deadline.”
“Thus, to say now that additional time is needed to do that which the law requires rings hollow,” Xinis said in denying the motion.
Hours later, the Trump administration filed with the court a motion to dismiss the case, citing what it described as a “lack of jurisdiction.” Xinis has not yet responded to the motion to dismiss.
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That filing comes amid a monthlong court fight over the status of Abrego Garcia, who remains in El Salvador.
Xinis in April ordered the Trump administration to comply with an expedited discovery schedule to determine whether they were complying with the directive to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
Since then, lawyers for the government and Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have sparred with Xinis in court over what exactly it means to “facilitate” his return. Xinis most recently described the process as beating a “frustrated and dead horse.”
She previously took aim at what she deemed to be the lack of information they submitted to the court as part of an expedited discovery process she ordered last month, describing the government submissions as “vague, evasive and incomplete” responses, and which she said demonstrated “willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations.”
She also chastised their efforts to invoke the state secrets privilege, noting at a status hearing this month that the administration tried to invoke the privilege via a footnote that referenced a filing in a different case before a different federal judge.
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She said that would not pass muster in her court.
The order comes as Trump officials have repeatedly alleged that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, though any formal ties have not been proven.
Xinis has indicated growing impatience with the Trump administration’s apparent failure to comply with her orders and submit the requested information.
This month, she sparred multiple times with DOJ lawyers over their assertions that Abrego Garcia was lawfully detained and deported.
“I can’t count the number of ‘I don’t knows’ my wonderful clerks and I have heard,” she said of depositions from Trump administration officials.
The order is the latest development in the ongoing feud between Trump officials and the courts over the use of the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime immigration law used earlier this year to quickly deport migrants from the U.S.
To date, the Trump administration has not knowingly complied with any court orders to return migrants who were removed and sent to El Salvador in the early wave of deportation flights, despite earlier court orders from Xinis, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and others.
It is unclear whether Xinis plans to begin contempt proceedings against the administration, though the federal judge in D.C. said earlier this year that he had found probable cause to do so.
