Case of wrongly deported man stalls amid secrecy claims

» It has been more than a month since the Supreme Court ordered the White House to work toward securing the release of a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March.

- ALAN FEUER

Top administration officials — including President Donald Trump — have repeatedly said that the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, will not be coming back to the US, largely because of accusations that he is a member of the violent street gang MS-13.

Their public statements have raised questions about whether the administration is openly defying the Supreme Court's instructions — and what, if anything, might be done about that.

But even as those weighty issues simmer in the background, the White House is confronting a more immediate concern: whether it has been abiding by a separate court order to answer questions about the way it has been handling the case.

On Friday, lawyers for the Justice Department appeared in the US District Court in Maryland to defend their latest effort to avoid disclosing details about several key aspects of the proceeding.

Those include the diplomatic steps that officials have taken in the past few weeks toward releasing Mr Abrego Garcia, as well as the nature of the deal between the White House and the Salvadoran government to house deported immigrants in its jails.

The Justice Department has argued that many of those details should not be made public because they amount to state secrets.