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Reposted by Jon Choate

southpaw

@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social

Reeling off 22 pages in high dudgeon on a Sunday morning, the district court in the Abrego Garcia case insists it retains jurisdiction and denies DOJ any relief from tomorrow’s deadline. (There’s also an appeal of the deadline pending at the circuit.) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Case 8:25-cv-00951-PX Document 31 |
Filed 04/06/25
Page 1 of 22
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND
KILMAR ARMANDO
ABREGO GARCIA, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
KRISTI NOEM, Secretary, Untie Stars Deat el al,
Defendants.
....
Civil Action No. 8:25-cv-00951-PX
***
MEMORANDUM OPINION
In 2019, an immigration judge-acting under the authority delegated by the United States
Attorney General and pursuant to powers vested by Congress granted Plaintiff Kilmar Armando
Abrego Garcia ("Abrego Garcia") withholding of removal, thereby protecting him from return to
his native country, El Salvador. ECF No. 1 1 41; ECF No. 1-1. Such protection bars the United
States from sending a noncitizen to a country where, more likely than not, he would face
persecution that risks his "life or freedom." See Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA"), 8
U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A); see also 8 C.F.R. §§ 208.16-.18 & .24 (setting forth the standard for
withholding of removal and the procedures required for its termination).
Six years later, without notice, legal justification, or due process, officers from U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE"), a subagency of the Department of Homeland
Security ("DHS"), put him on a plane bound for the Terrorism Confinement Center ("CECOT")
1

in El Salvador. ECF No. 19 59. ' Neither the United States nor El Salvador have told anyone why
he was returned to the very country to which he cannot return, or why he is detained at CECOT.?
See Hr'g Tr., Apr. 4, 2025, 25: 13-14 (Mr. Reuveni: "We have nothing to say on the merits. We
concede he should not have been removed to El Salvador."); see Hr'g Tr., Apr. 4, 2025, 34:25-
35:5 (The Court: "[W]hat basis is he held? Why is he [in CECOT] of all places?" ... Mr. Reuveni:
"I don't know. That information has not been given to me. I don't know.").
That silence is telling. As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest
him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador-let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere.* Having confessed
grievous error, the Defendants now argue that this Court lacks the power to hear this case, and they
lack the power to order Abrego Garcia's return. ECF No. 11 at 3. For the following reasons, their
jurisdictional arguments fail as a matter of law. Further, to avoid clear irreparable harm, and
because equity and justice compels it, the Court grants the narrowest, daresay only, relief
warranted: to order that Defendants return Abrego Garcia to the United States.
I. Background
Abrego Garcia was born and raised in Los Nogales, El Salvador. ECF No. 1-1 at 2. His
family owned a small and successful pupuseria. Id. For years, they were subject to extortion and
' Louis Casiano, U.S. Paid El Salvador to Take Venezuelan Tren de Aragua Members for 'Pennies on the Dollar,' White House Says, FOX NEWS (Mar. 26, 2025), https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-paid-el-salvador-take-venezuelan-tren-de-aragua-members-pennies-dollar-white-house-says.
first time on appeal cannot cure the failure to present them before this Court. In any event, Defendants have offered no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or to any terrorist activity. And vague allegations of gang association…

Case 8:25-cv-00951-PX Document 31
Filed 04/06/25 Page 3 of 22
threats of death by one of El Salvador's most notorious gangs, Barrio 18. Id. at 2. The gang used
Abrego Garcia as a pawn in its extortion, demanding that his mother give Abrego Garcia over to the gang or he and others in their family would be killed. Id. at 3. Attempting to escape the gang's
reach, the family moved three times without success. Id. To protect Abrego Garcia, they
ultimately sent him to the United States to live with his older brother, a U.S. citizen, in Maryland.
ECF No. 1 1 22.
Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland for many years without lawful status. Id. In early 2019,
while waiting at the Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland, to be hired as a day laborer, Abrego
Garcia was arrested. Id. 11 25-26. The Prince George's County Police Department questioned
him about gang affiliation, but nothing came of it. Id. 1 27. He was then turned over to ICE
custody. Id. 128.
On March 29, 2019, DHS initiated removal proceedings against Abrego Garcia pursuant
to 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i). ECF No. 1 1 29. On April 24, 2019, Abrego Garcia appeared
before an immigration judge (*IJ") where he conceded his deportability and applied for asylum,
withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture. ECF No. 1-1.
Pending resolution of the requested relief, DHS argued for Abrego Garcia to be detained
in ICE custody. ECF No. 1 1 30. DHS relied principally on a singular unsubstantiated allegation that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13.5 The IJ ultimately detained Abrego Garcia pending
the outcome of his requested relief from deportation, a decision affirmed by the Board of
Immigration Appeals. ECF Nos. 11-1 & 11-2.
October 10, 2019, following a full evidentiary hearing, the IJ granted Abrego Garcia
§ The "evidence" against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS…

withholding of removal to El Salvador pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A). As a matter of law,
withholding of removal prohibits DHS from returning an alien to the specific country in which he
faces clear probability of persecution. In Abrego Garcia's case, the IJ concluded that he was
entitled to such protection because the Barrio 18 gang had been "targeting him and threatening
him with death because of his family's pupusa business." ECF No. 1-1 at 2. DHS never appealed the grant of withholding of removal, and so the decision became final on November 9, 2019. See
Hr'g Tr., Apr. 4, 2025, 24:15-16 (Mr. Reuveni: "The government did not appeal that decision, so
it is final."). Accordingly, as Defendants have repeatedly admitted, they were legally prohibited
from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. See Hr'g Tr., Apr. 4, 2025, 25:6-7 (Mr. Reuveni:
"There's no dispute that the order could not be used to send Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.").
For the next six years, Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland with his wife and their three
children. ECF No. 1 11 24-25. He complied fully with all directives from ICE, including annual check-ins, and has never been charged with or convicted of any crime. ECF No. 1-3, ECF No. 1
145. On March 12, 2025, while driving home from work with his young son in the car, Abrego
Garcia was stopped by ICE agents. Id. 11 48 49. The officers had no warrant for his arrest and no lawful basis to take him into custody; they told him only that his "status had changed." Id. 1
50. He was first transported to an ICE facility in Baltimore, Maryland. Id. 11 51-53. Next, ICE agents shuttled him to detention facilities in Louisiana and La Villa, Texas. Id. 11 54-57. He was
allowed a handful of calls to his wife. He said that he was told he would see a judge soon. Id. But
• A decision by an IJ becomes final "upon waiver of appeal or upon expiration of the time to appeal if no appeal is taken within that time." 8 C.F.R. § 1003.39. The deadline for filing an ap…

April 6, 2025 at 1:09 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

sarah jeong

@sarahjeong.bsky.social

Something I also found really interesting was the heavy emphasis on conformity in protest, something that is anathema in all walks of american political life. eg: swathes of the crowd would be directed to sit down on the ground at the same time; this locked the crowd in space and prevented crushing

April 6, 2025 at 5:55 AM

Reposted by Jon Choate

sarah jeong

@sarahjeong.bsky.social

ok so!!! something I found really interesting after talking to Korean protesters was... well, it was actually me realizing something about protest in the US: protest is trapped in an unwinnable spiral about "peaceful" versus "violent" protest, and even people
who know it's dumb can't break free

ICE must be destroyed 🏳️‍⚧️🏴 @miawong.bsky.social · Apr 6

Deeply weird seeing people try to paint the protests in South Korea as family friendly parties when the one that stopped the original coup featured girls doing karate moves on riot cops and guys in the legislature spraying special forces units with fire extinguishers

Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

April 6, 2025 at 5:29 AM

Reposted by Jon Choate

sarah jeong

@sarahjeong.bsky.social

it's tuesday evening and we're korean

Defence Scheme Enjoyer 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇬🇱🇲🇽🇵🇸 @maxp94.bsky.social · Dec 3

Absolutely zero shade at all, but why were so many reporters and politicians drunk on a Monday evening?

sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · Dec 3

I am, incidentally, pretty drunk rn (the job is 24/7!!!). This is the most Korean thing I've ever done.

December 3, 2024 at 5:36 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Paul Krugman

@pkrugman.bsky.social

We’ve all become desensitized, but it’s amazing how at this point the Trump campaign rests entirely on denouncing things that aren’t happening — a imaginary bad economy, imaginary runaway crime and now an imaginary failure of Biden and Harris to respond to natural disaster

September 30, 2024 at 9:37 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

southpaw

@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social

I keep coming back to Paxton’s definition of fascism.

What Is Fascism?
The moment has come to give fascism a usable short handle, even though we know that it encompasses its subject no better than a snapshot encompasses a person.
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

September 30, 2024 at 9:22 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Greg Sargent

@gregsargent.bsky.social

Yes, you read that right. TB went up by *one case* from 2022 to 2023. In a county of 135,000.

Meanwhile, HIV is basically the same as it is across all of Ohio.

Vance said TV and HIV had "skyrocketed."

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · Sep 19

JD Vance is also claiming that because of Haitians, communicable diseases in Springfield have "skyrocketed."

I talked to the health commissioner in Clark County, where Springfield is located. Vance's claim is nonsense.

Details here:
newrepublic.com/series/48/jd...

September 19, 2024 at 11:41 AM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn.bsky.social

New SCOTUS standard : the President can ask Seal Team Six to make you disappear but can’t make your student debt disappear

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · Aug 28

The Supreme Court has declined to reinstate the Biden administration's latest plan to cancel student debt for millions of borrowers, for now

Supreme Court won't reinstate Biden administration's latest student loan forgiveness plan for now

The Justice Department had asked the Supreme Court to lift a sweeping appeals court order that blocked the program, known as the SAVE plan.

www.cbsnews.com

August 29, 2024 at 11:46 AM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Matt Novak

@paleofuture.bsky.social

They're just sitting on a couch while talking about Vance's dangerous ideas about voting rights. They never mention the couch. Vance became the easiest punchline imaginable within a week.

Chris Murphy: My buddy @brianschatz
and l have some thoughts about JD Vance’s really creepy idea to give less votes to people without kids.

Give a watch.

July 27, 2024 at 5:54 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Ed

@notdred.bsky.social

My god is it refreshing to see the Democratic Party finally abandoning the line of “the Republican Party should be better than this” and fully leaning into “what the fuck is going on with these guys”

July 26, 2024 at 8:45 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

ryan cooper

@ryanlcooper.com

"Across the 50 years preceding Biden’s tenure in office, the U.S. economy enjoyed only 25 *total* months with an unemployment rate below 4 percent. Biden did it for 27 consecutive months" slate.com/news-and-pol...

You Have No Idea What Joe Biden Did for Employment

The effects of inflation could have been much, much worse.

slate.com

July 25, 2024 at 12:14 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Randall Munroe

@xkcd.com

President Venn Diagram xkcd.com/2962

July 23, 2024 at 12:03 AM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Gautham Rao

@gauthamrao.bsky.social

July 21, 2024 at 8:00 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

emptywheel

@emptywheel.bsky.social

Reup: Rob Hur & Mark Krickbaum came into interview w/Biden w/a theory, he pointed out their logical flaws, but they printed it up anyway. I think they only called him a geezer bc he made them look stupid.

www.emptywheel.net/2024/03/13/h...

How Alleged Geezer Joe Biden Caught Rob Hur and Mark Krickbaum Trying to Sandbag Him - emptywheel

Robert Hur and Mark Krickbaum's novelistic theory about how a folder of Afghan documents came to be in Joe Biden's garage looks even stupider when you review the transcript.

www.emptywheel.net

March 13, 2024 at 6:06 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Joshua J. Friedman

@joshuajfriedman.com

It's incredible how many stories like this can keep popping up, years later

Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · Mar 9

www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/b...

How Trump’s Justice Dept. Derailed an Investigation of a Major Company

The industrial giant Caterpillar hired William Barr and other lawyers to defuse a federal criminal investigation of alleged tax dodges.

www.nytimes.com

March 9, 2024 at 4:41 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Casey Johnston

@caseyjohnston.bsky.social

the receipts here are completely thrilling to me, as a connoisseur of actual product research (Wirecutter alum), but also it's very sad what's happening to sites that cuts through the bullshit online, and that Google has no handle on things at all housefresh.com/david-vs-dig...

How Google is killing independent sites like ours - HouseFresh

And why you shouldn’t trust product reviews from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google.

housefresh.com

February 21, 2024 at 11:28 PM

Jon Choate

@jonchoate.bsky.social

Beyond the "it's a bold strategy" take, I'm assuming this has got to be with respect to arguments on punitive damages because I can't see how this explicit plea to sympathy would ever be permissible in closing otherwise.

Helen Kennedy @helenkennedy.bsky.social · Dec 14

My god. This is Rudy's own lawyer closing.

Tweet saying Giuliani's lawyer told the court he decided Rudy should not testify because "these women have been through enough.

Tweets reporting that Giuliani's lawyer repeatedly criticized him but notes he's almost 80 and should be remembered for 911, not for "what's happened in recent times."

December 14, 2023 at 8:43 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Timothy Burke

@bubbaprog.xyz

Since none of the news stories about Media Matters suing Ken Paxton included the actual lawsuit embedded or even linked in the article, here you go: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

#1 in Media Matters for America v. Paxton (D. Maryland, 8:23-cv-03363) – CourtListener.com

COMPLAINT against Warren Kenneth Paxton, Jr ( Filing fee $ 405 receipt number BMDDC-10980069.), filed by Media Matters for America, Eric Hananoki. (Attachments: # 1 Civil Cover Sheet, # 2 Summons, # 3...

storage.courtlistener.com

December 13, 2023 at 4:38 AM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Mike Masnick

@mmasnick.bsky.social

Another day hiking in the wilderness but took enough of a break to write up my thoughts on Elon Musk's SLAPP suit.

www.techdirt.com/2023/11/21/c...

Congrats To Elon Musk: I Didn’t Think You Had It In You To File A Lawsuit This Stupid. But, You Cr...

So, yesterday we covered Elon Musk’s ridiculous censorial threat to sue Media Matters “the split second the court opens on Monday.” Of course, as we noted, you can file lawsuits 24/7. And yet, a...

www.techdirt.com

November 21, 2023 at 11:54 PM

Reposted by Jon Choate

Fucking Bitch Hat

@kenwhite.bsky.social

No, but seriously: Trump promoting calls for citizen arrests of judges and prosecutors is goddamned dangerous given his lunatic fans. I’m not saying that this absolutely meets the Brandenburg test for incitement (intended and likely to cause imminent lawless action) but it’s a colorable argument.

Fucking Bitch Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social · Nov 14

Every day with this asshole is a law school exam fact pattern from an unmedicated professor with anxiety issues

www.forbes.com/sites/alison...