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The Trump administration confirmed on Saturday that Kilmar Abrego Garciaa Maryland resident mistakenly deported last month, remains confined in a notorious prison in El Salvador but did not provide the full scope of information demanded by a federal judge regarding efforts to bring him back.
In a court filing submitted, US state department official Michael G Kozak said that Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, reported news agency Associated Press.
“He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador,” wrote Kozak, identified in the filing as a “Senior Bureau Official” in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.
However, Kozak’s statement failed to address US district judge Paula Xinis’s additional directives. On Friday, the judge had ordered the administration to disclose not only Abrego Garcia’s “current physical location and custodial status” but also “what steps, if any, defendants have taken (and) will take, and when, to facilitate” his return.
Xinis had expressed deep frustration over the government’s lack of transparency. “I’m not asking for state secrets. All I know is that he’s not here,” she said during a tense court hearing on Friday, adding, “The government was prohibited from sending him to El Salvador, and now I’m asking a very simple question: Where is he?”
As per AP, Friday’s hearing exposed the administration’s failure to provide even basic information about Garcia’s whereabouts or the plan for his return, prompting Xinis to demand daily updates from a US official with direct knowledge of the case.
Garcia, 29, was deported in March despite a 2019 federal court ruling that prohibited his removal due to the likelihood he would face persecution in El Salvador. The deportation, which was later admitted by a US immigration official to be an “administrative error,” sent him to El Salvador’s CECOT prisona high-security facility known for holding dangerous criminals.
Garcia’s deportation occurred under a $6 million agreement between the Trump administration and the Salvadoran government. The deal allowed US authorities to detain and transfer migrants to Salvadoran custody.
