Trump Administration Will Try to Deport Abrego Garcia Before His Trial, Justice Dept. Says

The Justice Department said on Monday that Trump officials would immediately begin the process of expelling Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the country again if he is released from custody next week on charges filed after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador in March.

That plan, laid out by a Justice Department lawyer at a hearing in Federal District Court in Maryland, directly contradicted a statement by the White House last month describing the possibility that the administration might re-deport Mr. Abrego Garcia as “fake news.”

At the hearing, Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing the original civil case emerging from the wrongful deportation, expressed frustration at the government’s shifting statements about its plans to handle Mr. Abrego Garcia. The statements in court by the Justice Department lawyer, Jonathan Guynn, further muddied an already unclear picture of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s future after the administration abruptly returned him to the United States last month to face criminal charges.

At one point, Judge Xinis compared getting certain answers out of the government to “nailing Jell-O to a wall.” At another point, she described the “complete chaos” that had arisen from Mr. Abrego Garcia’s being “caught” between his civil case in Maryland and his criminal case in Federal District Court in Nashville.

Mr. Abrego Garcia is in custody in Nashville, where he has been indicted on charges of taking part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the United States. Even though a federal magistrate judge has said he can go free because he was not a flight risk or a danger to the community, his lawyers asked that he remain locked up for the moment, fearing that the administration might seek to deport him again.

There has been persistent confusion about what might happen to Mr. Abrego Garcia almost from the moment he was brought back from his erroneous expulsion to El Salvador.