‘The Evidence Is Not Credible': Judge Skewers Defiant Trump DOJ In Abrego Garcia Case

Yahoo

11-07-2025

GREENBELT, MARYLAND – In a saga that has dragged on for four months that feel like four years, the Trump administration continues to stonewall the judge in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case with dilatory tactics and bad faith responses to her inquiries. Unlike the in-your-face defiance of a few weeks ago, the tactics have become a little more subtle and perhaps less obvious to non-lawyers, but they're not lost on U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis.
With Abrego Garcia now facing criminal charges in Tennessee, the question is no longer whether the government will return him from wrongful imprisonment in El Salvador but whether it will deport him again if he is released from criminal custody — which could come as soon as next week — while his trial is pending. That's the issue Xinis was being asked to grapple with in what was supposed to be a brief evidentiary hearing that improbably stretched from yesterday afternoon into this morning. Xinis hasn't yet ruled on Abrego Garcia's requests, including that he and his attorneys be given 72 hours notice before he's removed to a third country and that in the meantime he be returned to Maryland, where he lived before he was removed to El Salvador in violation of an immigration judge's order. A ruling from Xinis is imminent.
I want to look beyond the ultimate fate of Abrego Garcia to the larger issues the case raises about the rule of law. His case presents profound and still unanswered questions about whether the Trump administration can and will be held to account for brazenly defying court orders, giving the judge the runaround, advancing shifting and contradictory legal arguments, jerking the opposing side around during discovery, and using DOJ lawyers to shield government officials from court scrutiny. While the administration's treatment of Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully detained at CECOT in El Salvador for some 10 weeks, has been abhorrent, its conduct in court has been egregious, too.
Let's start with the DOJ lawyers in the case. After the Trump DOJ early on fired career attorney Erez Reuveni for being too candid with the court, most of the heavy lifting in the case has been done by political appointees, itself unusual and unprecedented at this scale and frequency prior to the second Trump presidency. On top of that, DOJ has sent an ever-changing cast of political appointees into court, not just diminishing the quality of the lawyering but making it difficult for the judge to hold them to account for their previous representations and assurances.
Across three days of hearings this week, a merry-go-round of DOJ lawyers popped up again. A newly minted DOJ attorney named Bridget O'Hickey arrived at a hearing in the case on Monday and handled about half of the government's argument but didn't enter her appearance in the case until Wednesday. O'Hickey didn't start working at the Justice Department until May, according to her Linkedin profile; the Abrego Garcia case started in March.
By Thursday, another new face popped up at the government counsel table. Sarmad M. Khojasteh joined DOJ in April, according to his Linkedin profile, and had had no previous involvement in the Abrego Garcia case, at least not on the record. But he was suddenly lead counsel for the government across two days of hearings, during which he frequently drew the judge's ire by mangling the history of the case.
Judge Xinis of Maryland has lightly remarked on the cavalcade of DOJ lawyers, with tart but breezy asides from the bench like, 'I'm sure you've read everything in the case.' The revolving door of DOJ attorneys seems clearly intended to replenish the exhausted supply of the benefit of the doubt and personal capital expended by prior attorneys. It has also made it harder for Xinis to pin the government down.
But the bulk of the bad faith conduct over the last two days involved the witness that the government put on the stand after Xinis ordered it to present an official with personal knowledge of the Abrego Garcia case who could answer questions about what the government intends to do with him if he is released pending trial in Tennessee.
The government called Thomas Giles, a career ICE official who is now the interim assistant director for enforcement and removal operations, a relatively high-ranking position. But as Abrego Garcia's attorneys quickly drew out on cross examination, Giles had had no involvement with the Abrego Garcia case until Tuesday morning, when he received a call notifying him that he would be the designated government witness.
It only got worse from there. Pressed by Abrego Garcia lawyer Sascha N. Rand to explain what he had done to prepare for his testimony, Giles admitted to reading a one-and-a-half-page executive summary of the case that had been prepared for him, doing a cursory search of his emails, and reviewing new ICE policies on third country removals. Giles confirmed that other than government lawyers, he had talked to no other officials in or outside of ICE involved in the Abrego Garcia case to get himself up to speed.
'I do not have personal knowledge of the case,' Giles conceded at one point, before trying to rally. 'But I did acquire that knowledge over the past two days.'
In sum, it became apparent that Giles had no personal knowledge of the Abrego Garcia case despite Xinis' order that the government produce such a witness.
'He didn't call anyone,' Judge Xinis later observed. 'He didn't read anything.'
Giles wasn't even familiar with the broader policy of third country removals, the process for which the judge was trying to understand so that she could anticipate what might happen to Abrego Garcia as soon as next week. After extended, convoluted testimony from Giles about his understanding of how third country removals work, he conceded, 'I have very little experience with third country removals. I haven't processed anyone in 18 years.'
Giles' lack of familiarity with the case and general obtuseness dragged what was supposed to have been, according to the judge, a hearing of one hour or so into a four-hour grind of circular, non-responsive answers and multiple interventions by the judge to try to clear up her own confusion about what standard policy at ICE used to be, what it is now, and whether it will be applied to Abrego Garcia.
'I don't have a whole lot of faith that I understand exactly what is going on,' Xinis would later say.
It was a less dramatic but effective parallel to the myriad other obstacles the administration erected to stonewall earlier phases of the case. It left Xinis with 'grave concerns about what I heard today and what will happen to Mr. Abrego Garcia,' she said at the end of testimony Thursday.
Giles' non-responsive testimony set the stage for arguments Friday morning on Abrego Garcia's emergency motion seeking 72-hours notice before he's removed to a third country and his return to Maryland while his trial is pending. Xinis arrived in a sour mood over what she had heard from Giles and the government's conduct, at one point calling a government argument 'an insult to my intelligence.'
It went downhill from there for new-to-the-case DOJ lawyer Sarmad M. Khojasteh.
'You're making the plaintiff's point,' Xinis interjected during his argument. 'The point is the utter refusal of your client to engage in any conversation about what is going to happen on Wednesday despite the extraordinary circumstances of this case.'
In comments from the bench, Xinis confirmed that she had little faith in Giles' testimony and that it had undermined rather than bolstered the government's position. 'The evidence is not credible,' Xinis said. 'It's insufficient and incredible.'
Xinis was particularly incensed by the government's repeated assertions — made dozens of times — that Abrego Garcia's fate next week would be left to a yet-to-be-determined low-level case officer and that officer wouldn't even begin to consider what to do with Abrego Garcia until he is moved from criminal custody into ICE custody.
'It defies reality that this is going to be left to a desk officer,' Xinis told Khojasteh. 'And the more you press that, the more concerned I am.'
Underlying Xinis' concern is that the Abrego Garcia case has clearly been handled at the highest levels of the Trump administration, including at the Cabinet level and into the White House. Her efforts to figure out who has been making decisions and to obtain testimony from administration officials with direct knowledge of those decisions has mostly failed over the past four months. Instead, she's been given witnesses who can't speak from personal knowledge. DOJ political appointees — rarely the same ones twice — have mostly taken the hits that were reserved for administration officials.
Against that backdrop, the notion that there is no plan for what to do next with Abrego Garcia seemed preposterous. And Judge Xinis called it out: 'Now you will have me believe that a desk officer will quarterback where Mr. Abrego Garcia goes and what they do next.'
Based on her comments in court, Xinis seemed most likely to issue an order effectively blocking the administration for at least a short period of time from moving Abrego Garcia to a far-flung location in the United States or to a third country. Her remarks signaled that over the course of the case, Xinis' skepticism toward the administration has ripened into full-blown disbelief: 'If past is prologue, Mr. Abrego Garcia will be moved … and before we know it he's on a plane and I've lost jurisdiction.'