After accusing government of foot-dragging, judge in Abrego Garcia case agrees to week delay

The federal judge overseeing the case of erroneously deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia agreed Wednesday to a week’s delay in discovery that was supposed to get the case moving.

The one-page order by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis came without explanation after the government filed sealed documents requesting a one-week extension of the original 6 p.m. Wednesday deadline to file discovery materials in the case.

That expedited discovery schedule had been ordered last week, after Xinis said the government appeared “to have done nothing to aid in Abrego Garcia’s release from custody and return to the United States” where courts would handle his case, as was ordered earlier this month by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Abrego Garcia, an undocumented immigrant living in Beltsville, was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 12 and soon deported to El Salvador, even though ICE now acknowledges that he was still under the protection of a 2019 court order that prohibited his return to that country for fear he would be harassed or killed by gangs there.

Abrego Garcia’s family — his wife and children are U.S. citizens — sued for his return and Xinis ordered him brought back by April 7. That deadline passed as her order was appealed to higher courts, but the Supreme Court on April 10 largely agreed with Xinis and said the government needed to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.

But U.S. offiicials, all the way up to President Donald Trump, have said they do not have the power to bring him back from El Salvador. And Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has also said he does not have the power to return Abrego Garcia, who remains in prison in El Salvador.

Wednesday’s pause in the case also came one day after Xinis, in a sternly worded order, charged the government with a “willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations.”

That foot-dragging included claims that information could not be produced because it was shielded by government privilege, attorney-client privilege, state secrets privilege and more that Xinis rejected as unsupported.

“For weeks, defendants have sought refuge behind vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege, using them as a shield to obstruct discovery and evade compliance with this Court’s orders,” Xinis wrote Tuesday.

While agreeing with the government that one discovery question from the plaintiffs was overly broad, Xinis rejected most of the government’s complaints about other interrogatories, or found its answers to them “vague, evasive and incomplete” and an indication of “willful and intentional noncompliance” with the court’s orders and the discovery process.

Despite the Supreme Court’s finding that the deportation was “improper” — “unlawful” in the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor — Trump, and members of his administration, now insist that the deportation was proper and that Abrego Garcia is a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, even though he has never been charged and has no criminal record. If he was returned to the U.S., they say, he would just be tried and deported again.

Supporters of Abrego Garcia, particularly Democrats who have taken up his cause, said that’s all they’re asking for — a chance for Abrego Garcia to have his day in court.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who made headlines by going to El Salvador and forcing a meeting with Abrego Garcia last week, said on the Sunday talk shows this week that he was not defending Abrego Garcia the man as much as he was “defending the rights of this man to due process.”

That refrain was picked up by Democrats in Maryland this week.

Del. Jheanelle K. Wilkins (D-Montgomery), who took part Wednesday in a virtual panel with EMERGE, an organization that pushes Democratic women to run for office, said Maryland has become an example of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts through the Abrego Garcia case.

“It is really an example that has spotlighted the danger of this administration, where we are seeing a lack of checks and balances,” said Wilkins, who sponsored successful legislation in the 2025 legislature to protect undocumented immigrants  from unnecessary interactions with immigration officials at specific public locations.

“For the Supreme Court to agree with previous decisions and that this was wrong for a person who a judge has deemed can stay in the country,” she said, “who has been convicted of no crime, neither in the United States, in the state of Maryland and El Salvador … to be kidnapped basically and in cahoots with another country to be imprisoned is just really beyond the pale.”

Gov. Wes Moore (D), speaking to reporters Wednesday, said authorities here are only being told that Abrego Garcia “is moving around from prison to prison in El Salvador simply because Donald Trump says he is guilty of something.”

“A judge has not said that. A court has not said that. And so what we’re simply saying is bring him home to stand trial and then let a judge decide what exactly should be the fate of him,” Moore said. “Because this is, this is not about immigration. This is about due process.”

“Are we going to follow the Constitution or not? Are we going to follow the word of the Supreme Court or not, because Donald Trump alone does not have say whether or not a person is guilty or not of a crime,” he said.

Moore said his administration is talking to the state’s congressional delegation and with Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office to look at “all available options” to ensure that due process is followed by El Salvador, but he did not discuss details.

“I think we have a whole series of options that we are looking at right now ,” he said.