Administration has done nothing to facilitate Maryland man's release, his lawyers say

A day after a highly anticipated Oval Office meeting in which the president of El Salvador said he would not return a wrongly deported Maryland man being held in his country, the federal judge who ordered his return will hear from Trump administration attorneys at a court hearing Tuesday afternoon.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is entering his second month in an El Salvador mega-prison after he was deported there on March 15 despite being issued a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country.

Trump administration officials say Abrego Garcia, who escaped political violence in El Salvador 2011, is a member of the criminal gang MS-13, but to date they have provided little evidence of that assertion in court.

He is being held in El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison, along with hundreds of other alleged migrant gang members, under an arrangement in which the Trump administration is paying El Salvador $6 million to house migrants deported from the United States as part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, in an Oval Office meeting Monday with President Trump and the visiting El Salvador president, said that Abrego Garcia's return is "up to El Salvador."

"If El Salvador ... wanted to return him, we would facilitate it," she said.

Asked by reporters about Abrego Garcia, President Bukele responded, "I don't have the power to return him to the United States."

In a motion filed Tuesday in advance of the hearing, lawyers for Abrego Garcia argued that the Trump administration has not taken any steps to comply with the orders to facilitate his release.

"There is no evidence that anyone has requested the release of Abrego Garcia," they wrote in the filing.

The attorneys also took issue with the government's interpretation of the word "facilitate," which the administration has argued in court filings is limited to removing any domestic obstacles that would impede the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States.

Interpreting the term in that manner, Abrego Garcia's attorneys argued, would render "null" the Supreme Court's order that the government facilitate his release.

"To give any meaning to the Supreme Court's order, the Government should at least be required to request the release of Abrego Garcia. To date, the Government has not done so," they wrote in their motion.

In its daily update on the status of the case, ordered last week by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, Justice Department attorneys said Monday afternoon that the Department of Homeland Security does not "have the authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation."

The Supreme Court last week unanimously ruled that Judge Xinis "properly requires the Government to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador."

"The Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps," the high court added.

In an interview Monday evening with ABC News' Linsey Davis, an attorney for Abrego Garcia said he hopes Tuesday's hearing "lights a fire under the government to comply with the Supreme Court's order."

"What we're asking [of Trump] is exactly what the Supreme Court told him," attorney Benjamin Osorio said. "I personally have worked with DHS before to facilitate the return of several other clients who were deported and then won their cases at circuit court levels or at the Supreme Court, and ICE facilitated their return."

"So we're not asking anybody to do anything illegal," Osorio said. "We're asking them to follow the law."

"It feels a little bit like the Spider-Man meme where everybody's pointing at everybody else," Osorio said of Bukele's claim that he doesn't have the power to return Garcia. "But at the same time, I mean, we are renting space from the Salvadorans. We are paying them to house these individuals, so we could stop payment and allow them to be returned to us."

Asked if he is confident that Abrego Garcia will be returned, Osorio said he was concerned but hopeful.

"I'm worried about the rule of law, I'm worried about our Constitution, I'm worrying about due process," he said. "So at this point, I am optimistic to see what happens in the federal court hearing."