Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported. In a tense hearing, DOJ wouldn’t say where he is. What happens next?

By Devan Cole and Emily R. Condon, CNN

(CNN) — Less than a day after the Supreme Court said the Trump administration had to “facilitate” the return of a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, the case appeared headed for even murkier waters.

During a tense hearing before US District Judge Paula Xinis on Friday afternoon, Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign repeatedly stonewalled the judge as she sought to nail down details about the steps the administration is taking to secure the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, at one point even admitting he had no information to provide on exactly where the Maryland father of three currently is.

“I’m not asking for state secrets,” Xinis said after Ensign told her he didn’t have basic details on where Abrego Garcia is. “I’m asking a very simply question: Where is he?”

“There is no evidence today as to where he is today,” the judge said later. “That is extremely troubling.”

Xinis on Friday ordered the Justice Department to provide daily updates on what the administration is doing to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, but it remains unclear whether the reports would prove satisfactory to either the court or the lawyers representing Abrego Garcia and his family. The judge did not say what would happen if she didn’t like the answers.

Here’s what to know about the case:

Mistaken deportation

The Trump administration has conceded that it mistakenly deported him “because of an administrative error,” but maintains it cannot bring him back because he is in Salvadoran custody.

Abrego Garcia was granted protected status by an immigration judge in 2019 that prohibited the federal government from sending him to El Salvador. His attorneys say he fled gang violence in El Salvador more than a decade ago.

Abrego Garcia had been identified by his wife in a photo of detainees entering intake at El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison CECOT last month. Officials with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement say he is a member of MS-13, which the Trump administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Xinis had initially ordered the administration to return Abrego Garcia to the US last Friday, calling the mistaken deportation an “illegal act,” and setting a midnight April 7 deadline.

The administration quickly appealed her order, first to the federal appeals court based in Richmond and then, when the intermediate court hadn’t yet ruled, to the Supreme Court, which put the deadline on hold while it considered the case.

The high court on Thursday backed Xinis’ order but did not give the administration a deadline for when Abrego Garcia should be returned, saying instead that the district court judge’s directive was unclear and needed clarification.

Importantly, the Supreme Court noted that the clarification needed to be made with “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

Hours later, Xinis issued a new order for the government to “take all available steps to facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and directed it to provide her with a sworn statement from an individual “with personal knowledge” of the steps the government has taken or is planning to take to secure his return.

But attorneys with the Justice Department told the judge on Friday morning that they needed more time to provide the sworn declaration, blowing past two deadlines she gave the department to file it.

She ruled later Friday that the administration “failed to comply” with her order for the information, saying it “made no meaningful effort to comply.”

What the judge ordered Friday

During the brief hearing Friday, Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, appeared incredulous as Ensign failed to answer her questions about the case, including their failure to meet her deadline for submitting the declaration.

“The record as it stands … is your clients have done nothing to facilitate the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia,” the judge said.

She pushed back strongly on the government’s argument that the Supreme Court order required her to first hear from the Justice Department before pushing ahead in the case and ordered up the daily updates to keep close tabs on how the administration was following her order.

“We’re not going to slow walk this,” Xinis said. “So you will have a full and fair opportunity to be heard, but we’re not relitigating what the Supreme Court has already put to bed.”

The judge said the updates must come in the form of a sworn statement from an individual with personal knowledge of the situation. The individual must answer a series of questions the judge has already posed to the government, including “the current physical location and custodial status of Abrego Garcia … what steps, if any, Defendants have taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s immediate return to the United States” and … “what additional steps Defendants will take, and when, to facilitate his return.”

“I hope you will in good faith comply,” she told Ensign, adding that even if the answer is that the government has no information to provide, she wants to know that every day.

“It’s important to go on record in a case of this nature,” the judge said.

The filing is due by 5 p.m. ET each day. The judge hasn’t said when she would stop requiring the submissions.

Will Abrego Garcia’s lawyers try to force compliance?

While Xinis’ homework for attorneys representing Abrego Garcia did not include daily court filings, she told them they are free to inform her of the harms they think are continuing in the case, as well as any “relief” they might ask for if they think the government isn’t complying with her order.

But the judge stopped short of agreeing to quickly issue a follow-up order requiring the government’s compliance with her earlier directive, indicating that she instead preferred Abrego Garcia’s attorneys to request such an order if they saw fit.

“(The) court’s order was sufficiently clear,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, told the judge at one point. “They clearly didn’t comply.”

Sandoval-Moshenberg also lambasted what he saw as the administration’s decision to send a lawyer to the hearing who has “no personal knowledge” on the status of Abrego Garcia.

“It is quite clear that the government, and I hate to use these words, is playing a game with their lawyers,” he told Xinis.

During the initial hearing in the case last week, the DOJ attorney who appeared before Xinis on behalf of the administration expressed frustration at not being able to answer key questions from the judge.

That attorney, Erez Reuveni, was quickly placed on administrative leave because of the admission, according to two people familiar with the matter.

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez and Evan Perez contributed to this report.

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