A federal judge on Monday ordered U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys representing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to continue working on the lawsuit brought by Kilmar Abrego Garcia during the government shutdown, despite the attorneys telling the court that their continued work on the case would be illegal without funding.
Obama-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis declined prosecutors’ requests to stay future deadlines and instead ordered the DOJ to produce witnesses capable of explaining what steps, if any, the government has taken to deport Abrego Garcia to Eswatini, the landlocked African nation, for an evidentiary hearing on Friday.
After denying the prosecutors’ request to stay proceedings until the government reopens, Xinis specifically ordered the DOJ to locate witnesses capable of testifying about, “what steps, if any, Respondents have taken to remove Petitioner to Eswatini, or any other country,” including Abrego Garcia’s preferred destination, Costa Rica, ahead of the hearing.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) first notified Abrego Garcia’s attorneys on September 5 that Eswatini had been designated as Abrego Garcia’s new country of removal, replacing Uganda.
ICE noted at the time that Abrego Garcia had expressed fear of persecution or torture in 22 nations, including Costa Rica, which the alleged human smuggler nonetheless identified as his preferred destination for removal after the U.S. State Department obtained diplomatic assurances for the DOJ during negotiations of a plea deal that ultimately fell through.
The repeated claims to fear persecution or torture by Abrego Garcia prompted the DOJ to describe the behavior as “gamesmanship” in his bid to avoid deportation, which he has sought to avoid despite a 2019 final removal order that an immigration judge recently upheld.
Attorneys representing Abrego Garcia recently told the court that an immigration judge’s September decision not to reopen his immigration case meant that he should be released from federal custody, as the judge noted in his ruling that there was no imminent plan to deport the citizen of El Salvador.
Notably, in an August 25 order, Xinis prohibited the federal government from deporting Abrego Garcia until she issued a final ruling in the second lawsuit he filed against the Trump administration. He currently remains detained at an ICE facility in Pennsylvania.
In her Monday order, Xinis also said the DOJ must produce any documents or internal communications that reflect a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plan to remove Abrego Garcia to Eswatini by no later than Wednesday, with the names of witnesses and summaries of their anticipated testimony due on Thursday.
This development in Abrego Garcia’s immigration lawsuit follows last week’s decision by U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw, another appointee of former President Barack Obama, who granted the alleged human smuggler’s request for discovery and an evidentiary hearing to prove his claim that the Trump administration is engaged in vindictive prosecution.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in June unsealed the criminal indictment accusing Abrego Garcia of working in a human smuggling ring for nearly a decade. The indictment came less than two months after The Tennessee Star reported in April that Abrego Garcia was stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) on November 30, 2022.
A spokesman for THP told The Star that Abrego Garcia was released at the instruction of the “Biden-era FBI,” despite a DHS document showing that troopers suspected human trafficking.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His trial is currently scheduled to begin in January 2026.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kilmar Abrego Garcia” by Murray Osorio PLLC.
The Judge is liable for costs by ordering non-compliance with federal law, yes