The Department of Justice says Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Maryland lawsuit against several U.S. government agency heads must be dismissed because the wrongly deported Salvadoran national has been returned to the United States.
In a Monday motion to dismiss as moot, the government said Abrego Garcia and his family have received the relief they sought since government agencies “have taken extraordinary steps and have facilitated, and indeed effectuated, Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.”
Last week, the construction worker’s attorneys filed a motion saying his Maryland lawsuit should continue “until the Government is held accountable for its blatant, willful, and persistent violations of court orders at excruciating cost to Abrego Garcia and his family.”
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked federal judge Paula Xinis to appoint a special master to investigate the circumstances behind his deportation, including seeking communications between agency heads.
His attorneys said the federal government has “engaged in an elaborate, all of government effort to defy court orders, deny due process, and disparage Abrego Garcia.”
In Monday’s filing, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said Xinis and the Maryland court no longer have standing to hear the case.
“To establish standing, there must be an ‘actual, ongoing controversy,'” Shumate wrote, citing previous court rulings. “If a plaintiff’s stake in a lawsuit falls away, so too does this Court’s subject matter jurisdiction.”
While Abrego Garcia’s attorneys want a special master to privately investigate communications between agency heads after the judge’s order to facilitate his return, Shumate pushed back: “Defendants no longer need discovery to reveal whether Defendants are complying the Court’s preliminary injunction.”
Abrego remains in Tennessee, after pleading not guilty to human smuggling charges, last Friday.
In the separate Tennessee case, the federal indictment accuses Abrego Garcia of smuggling throughout the U.S. hundreds of people living in the country illegally, including children and members of the violent MS-13 gang.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have characterized the smuggling case as a desperate attempt to justify the mistaken deportation. During Friday’s hearing, testimony included the revelation that Homeland Security didn’t begin investigating a 2022 traffic stop until April 28, 2025, after Abrego Garcia was in an El Salvador prison.
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