A federal judge granted the President's Department of Justice a delay in the deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Wednesday, according to the Washington Examiner. Judge Paula Xinis has given the government another week to gather information, but her full opinion is under seal.
This astonishing move came just a day after Xinis chided the Trump administration for dragging its feet on turning over information about his deportation. The Department of Justice now has until April 30 to furnish the details about Abrego Garcia's deportation.
A legal battle ensued after reports surfaced that Abrego Garcia's return to El Salvador was a mistake. In 2019, an immigration judge gave illegal immigrant Abrego Garcia relief from deportation, though the case was deemed a "close call."
However, the details of that order are not fully known, though attorneys for Abrego Garcia believe that a clerical error led to deportation. Meanwhile, the case has become a cause célèbre for people on both sides of the immigration debate.
Abrego Garcia was previously identified as a member of the dangerous MS-13 gang. He was sent to El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison as some stateside have sought to bring him back to the U.S.
Officials from agencies such as Homeland Security and the State Department have argued that Salvadoran authorities have no interest in returning him, including President Nayib Bukele. Still, his case is making its way through American courts.
Xinis, an Obama appointee, was not previously friendly to the Trump administration's requests until Wednesday. In fact, as Fox News reported, she was quite contentious in the proceedings just the day before. The judge has claimed that the administration is acting in "bad faith" and intentionally holding up the legal process.
"That ends now. 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 said in her eight-page order on Tuesday.
"Defendants have known, at least since last week, that this court requires specific legal and factual showings to support any claim of privilege. Yet they have continued to rely on boilerplate assertions," the judge previously said.
While the Trump administration is celebrating this small but significant victory, Democrats continue to use Abrego Garcia to advance their anti-Trump agenda. They have been falling all over themselves to make him into a hero of the left, but it could be a mistake.
According to a New York Post report, Abrego Garcia's criminal history suggests he may not be the saint the left is making him out to be. Besides being a suspected gang member, Abrego Garcia was also implicated in a domestic violence case against his wife and was caught up in a "human trafficking incident," but was ultimately let go.
Democrats are starting to realize that it may be a political miscalculation to go all in on advocacy for him. Some progressives are pointing out that this is a mere distraction from Trump's supposed other problems, while others realize this isn't the slam dunk they wanted.
"We need to step back and wait for someone to be deported who has a really compelling story that’s devastating that Average Joe’s upset about. That person hasn’t presented themselves yet, and Democrats are battling their better instincts and not just hop at the first sign of injustice," one Democratic operative told The Hill.
There are enough signals that Abrego Garcia is a problematic person to have in the country. While the courts sort out whether his deportation was appropriate, the issue is flushing out the Democrats who will defend suspected criminals at all costs.
