U.S. claim of state secrets privilege in Kilmar Abrego Garcia case is ‘inadequate,’ judge says

This undated photo provided by Murray Osorio PLLC shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (Murray Osorio PLLC via AP)

GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge told the Trump administration Friday that its explanation for invoking the state secrets privilege in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case is inadequate, describing the government’s reasoning for withholding information as “take my word for it.”

Trump administration attorneys have argued that releasing details in open court — or even to the judge in private – about its efforts to return Abrego Garcia to the United States would jeopardize national security.

But U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland said she was at a loss for how she can independently determine the nature of the government’s concerns with the information it provided.

“There’s simply no details,” she said. ”This is basically ‘take my word for it.’”

Xinis said the administration needs to “do a little bit more to show its work” on why it believes the state secrets privilege applies.

“It doesn’t have to be super detailed, but it has to give me something,” she said.

Jonathan Guynn, a Justice Department attorney, said he understood her concerns but disagreed that the government’s arguments were inadequate. He also said there’s no need for the judge to review the information herself to make a determination on threats to national security.

“We think we’ve provided significant information,” Guynn said.

Xinis had ordered Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador in April and has since directed the administration to provide documents and testimony showing what it has done, if anything, to comply.

Trump administration lawyers claim many of those details are protected, including sensitive diplomatic negotiations. Revealing the specifics would harm national security because foreign governments “would be less likely to work cooperatively with the United States,” they argued earlier in a brief to the court.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers contend the administration hasn’t shown “the slightest effort” toward retrieving him after his mistaken deportation. And they point to U.S. President Donald Trump’s interview last month with ABC News, in which he said he could bring Abrego Garcia back but won’t.

“Even as the Government speaks freely about Abrego Garcia in public, in this litigation it insists on secrecy,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers wrote to the court.

The focus of Friday’s hearing is a legal doctrine that is more often used in cases involving the military and spy agencies. Xinis’s ruling could impact the central question looming over the case: Has the Trump administration followed her order to bring back Abrego Garcia?

The Trump administration deported the Maryland construction worker to El Salvador in March. The expulsion violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation to his native country because he faced likely persecution by a local gang that had terrorized his family.

Abrego Garcia’s American wife sued, and Xinis ordered his return on April 4. The Supreme Court ruled on April 10 that the administration must work to bring him back.

Xinis later lambasted the administration for failing to explain what it has done to retrieve him and instructed the government to prove it was following her order. The Trump administration appealed, but the appeals court backed Xinis in a blistering order.

The debate over state secrets privilege is the latest development in the case.

In a legal brief filed Monday, Trump administration attorneys said they provided extensive information, including 1,027 pages of documents, to show they’re following the judge’s order.

They argued that Abrego Garcia’s legal team is now “attempting to pry into the privileged inner workings of the U.S. government apparatus and its communications with a foreign government.”

“Nearly all the additional materials Plaintiffs demand are protected by the state secrets and deliberative process privileges and so cannot be produced,” U.S. attorneys wrote.

In their brief, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys urged the judge to be skeptical, writing that the state secrets privilege “is not for hiding governmental blunders or malfeasance.”

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers noted that U.S. attorneys claim in court to be following Xinis’s order, while “senior officials from the President on down were saying precisely the opposite to the American public.”

For example, they cited an April 16 statement from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said, “He is not coming back to our country.”

“Over and over again, official statements by the Government — in congressional testimony, television interviews, and social media — confirm that producing this information would not imperil national security,” Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote.

The hearing is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. in federal court in Greenbelt.

Trump administration officials have said Abrego Garcia was deported based on a 2019 accusation from Maryland police that he was an MS-13 gang member. Abrego Garcia denied the allegation and was never charged with a crime, his attorneys said.

The administration later acknowledged that Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador was " an administrative error ” because of the immigration judge’s 2019 order. But Trump and others have continued to insist that Abrego Garcia was in MS-13.

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Finley reported from Norfolk, Va.

Article written by Michael Kunzelman and Ben Finley, The Associated Press