14 news outlets ask judge to unseal filings in Abrego García case

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A coalition of 14 news organizations on Tuesday asked the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit of the Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador to unseal records of the proceedings surrounding efforts to return him to the United States.

The request from the media outlets, including The Washington Post, comes as filings in the case over Kilmar Abrego García’s incarceration in a Salvadoran prison have increasingly been closed to the public. Trump administration officials claim to have held “appropriate diplomatic discussions” with El Salvador regarding Abrego García but have not publicly disclosed the nature or result of those interactions.

Since the Trump administration deported Abrego García to El Salvador – later admitting that it was in violation of an immigration judge’s 2019 order barring his removal to that country – the legal case surrounding his family’s efforts to have him brought back has become a high-profile example of the administration’s willingness to skirt or flout judicial directives. It is also a test of how federal judges, appeals courts and the Supreme Court can nudge the executive branch into doing what the law requires.

“The eyes of the public and all three branches of government are on this lawsuit,” the news organizations said in a motion Tuesday.

Within weeks of the case’s filing in March, the motion notes, it came before the Supreme Court and twice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, both of which affirmed an order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis that the Trump administration facilitate Abrego García’s release from custody in El Salvador. President Donald Trump discussed it during a nationally televised interview, and members of Congress traveled to El Salvador to advocate for Abrego García’s return.

“The case raises profound questions of separation of powers, civil liberties, and foreign relations,” the news organizations’ motion said. “Such a case requires maximum transparency so that ‘the public [can] participate in and serve as a check upon’ their government,” the motion added, quoting decades-old precedent.

Last month, Xinis granted the Trump administration a pause in fact-finding in the case. The pause came with the agreement of Abrego García’s lawyers, but court filings regarding the pause were sealed. Legal observers speculated that it was designed to give the Trump administration time to effect some change in Abrego García’s situation. The pause was lifted last week after another sealed filing and a closed court proceeding, with no apparent alteration to Abrego García’s circumstances.

Four administration officials are scheduled to be deposed in the case by Friday.

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Filings over the pause and resumption of discovery were made under seal “seemingly without requesting or receiving permission from the Court to do so,” the news organizations’ motion said.

Spokespeople for Abrego García’s lawyers and those from the Justice Department, which represents the Trump administration, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for the firm Ballard Spahr representing the news organizations declined to comment on the record.

In public statements, White House officials and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have characterized Abrego García’s release from custody in El Salvador as a virtual impossibility.

Xinis has said that she would consider contempt findings against administration officials for their defiance of her orders regarding efforts to return Abrego García but that she wanted to first develop a more complete factual case record.

Abrego García, 29, crossed the southern U.S. border illegally around 2011, after the Barrio 18 gang in El Salvador tried to recruit him into its ranks, then threatened to kill him if he didn’t join, according to testimony he provided to an immigration judge in 2019. He is now married to Jennifer Vasquez Sura, with whom he has been raising three children, though their status as U.S. citizens does not mean he has legal status.

Abrego García was among 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans who were placed on three planes on March 15 and sent to El Salvador despite a judge’s order that those flights turn around or stay on the ground in the United States.

The Trump administration has accused Abrego García, who has no criminal record, of belonging to the gang MS-13, but his family has denied the allegation, and he was allowed no opportunity to dispute it in court ahead of his deportation and imprisonment. The Justice Department has acknowledged that Abrego García’s removal to El Salvador was illegal because of a humanitarian protection – known as “withholding of removal” – that he received in 2019 from an immigration judge who found his life would be in danger if he were sent back to El Salvador.

The passengers on the March flights were sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a prison known for its harsh conditions, and immigrant advocates say the detainees have no access to either the U.S. or Salvadoran justice system. Abrego García was later transferred to a low-security prison there, which the Salvadoran government has said does not have inmates who are gang members.

In addition to The Post, the following news organizations, or their publishers or parent companies, filed to unseal portions of the case: the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNN, CBS Broadcasting, Fox News Network, NPR, NBCUniversal News Group, the New York Times Company, the New Yorker, the New York Post and Reuters.

A spokesperson for Dow Jones & Company, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, said Dow Jones organized the effort.