Greek-American judge Paula Xinis has challenged the decision by the Trump administration to deport an immigrant to an El Salvador prison.
Xinis said Tuesday that she will order sworn testimony by Trump administration officials to determine if they complied with her orders to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Xinis, a U.S. District Judge in Maryland, issued her order after Trump officials continually refused to retrieve the man. She said they defied a “clear” Supreme Court order.
She also downplayed Monday’s comments by White House officials and El Salvador’s president that they were unable to bring back Garcia, describing their statements as “two very misguided ships passing in the night.”
“The Supreme Court has spoken,” Xinis said, adding that what was said in the Oval Office on Monday “is not before the court.”
In her written order published Tuesday evening, Xinis called for the testimony of four Trump administration officials who work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
She expects the process to last about two weeks. Xinis wrote that Trump administration officials “have done nothing at all” toward returning Abrego Garcia. But, she wrote, they “remain obligated, at a minimum, to take the steps available to them toward aiding, assisting, or making easier Abrego Garcia’s release.”
The hearing came a day after White House advisers repeated the claim that they lack the authority to bring back the Salvadoran national from his native country. The president of El Salvador also said Monday that he would not return Abrego Garcia, likening it to smuggling “a terrorist into the United States.”
Associated Press reports that Abrego Garcia’s deportation has become a flashpoint as President Donald Trump follows up on campaign promises of mass deportations, including to an El Salvador prison. Following Tuesday’s hearing, a crowd outside the federal court house in Maryland chanted, “What do we want? Due process. When do we want it? Now!”
Paula Xinis was born Panagiota Xinis in 1968. She received a Juris Doctor in 1997 from Yale Law School. She began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Diana Gribbon Motz of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, from 1997 to 1998.
On March 26, 2015, President Barack Obama nominated Xinis to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.
Her nomination was reported from the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 17, 2015, by a voice vote. On May 16, 2016, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a 53–34 vote. She received her judicial commission on May 18, 2016.
