A judge will hear arguments Friday afternoon from both the Department of Homeland Security and counsel for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran resident of Beltsville whom the government said this week was deported after an “administrative error.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, sent Abrego Garcia last month to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious prison for the country’s infamous gangs. The deportation came despite a judge’s earlier ruling in 2019 that granted him legal protection to stay in the U.S. because of the likelihood that Abrego Garcia would face persecution from gangs in his home country.

President Donald Trump’s administration has characterized Abrego Garcia, 29, as a member of MS-13, a violent, transnational gang which began in Los Angeles in the 1990s, but wreaked havoc in El Salvador in recent decades. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also said this week the administration has evidence that Abrego Garcia was involved in human trafficking.

But Abrego Garcia’s family and attorney have denied such claims. His attorney will ask the judge to order DHS to find a way to bring him back, despite the administration’s insistence it can’t and won’t do that.

The hearing could set up the latest challenge for the immigration agenda of the Trump administration, whose willingness to defy court orders has raised significant legal questions.

Abrego Garcia’s attorney called the case “an outrageous set of facts” in a legal brief filed Thursday, stating it could set dangerous precedent.

“If Defendants’ [Department of Homeland Security] actions in this case are allowed to remain without redress, then the withholding of removal statute and orders of immigration courts are meaningless, because the government can deport whomever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done,” the attorney wrote.

News of Abrego Garcia’s deportation drew national attention and the ire of state and local officials and the legal community.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore called for the government to “correct” the error. Attorney General Anthony Brown called it an “outrageous mistake.” Maryland Senators Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks in a joint statement called the deportation “unacceptable” and said the Trump administration “must take immediate action to right this wrong.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin spoke out against the deportation and raised the issue during a Capitol Hill hearing. Baltimore City Council member Mark Parker said he was angered, but not surprised by Abrego Garcia’s circumstances.

“This focus on detention numbers and a disregard for targeted enforcement means that community members who have some kind of legal protected status are at an increasing risk for detention and deportation,” Parker said.

Sheri Hoidra, chair of the immigration committee for the Maryland State Bar Association, said district court filings for Abrego Garcia show he had never been arrested or charged with any crimes in the U.S. or in El Salvador. And that there was no known link or association between him and MS-13, she added.

“So who are we really deporting and not permitting to have due process?” Hoidra asked.

Land of immigrants

A visit this week to Abrego Garcia’s Beltsville community found quiet blocks of largely single-family homes, lined with pink blossoming trees canopied over parked trucks and SUVs on its streets.

At some homes, a Mexican flag fluttered and a “Love is love” sign stuck out a front door. A child’s bicycle lay tilted on the grass on Abrego Garcia’s front yard, next to a small green scooter and a blue dinosaur toy.

There are signs everywhere that the neighborhood is filled with immigrants. Less than a mile away from Abrego Garcia’s home are hair salons and barber shops with signs welcoming Spanish speakers. The Japanese restaurant plays merengue, and the neighborhood market is Mi Barrio, a staple for 14 years.

One worker there said she recognized Abrego Garcia’s face, which made her instantly alarmed about the prison in El Salvador where he is believed to be held.

“When people are sent there,” she whispered, referring to the prison, “They don’t come back.”

Abrego Garcia’s union, SMART Local 100, described the first-year apprentice as a devoted father. The president of the union yesterday expressed support for Abrego Garcia and demanded his “rightful return.”

Abrego Garcia is married to a U.S. citizen with whom he has a 5-year-old special-needs child. They are also raising two children from his wife’s previous relationship.

According to court papers, his life was a departure from the chaos he fled in El Salvador, where a gang, Barrio 18, routinely extorted his parents’ business for “rent” money and threatened to kill him and his brother if the family didn’t comply.

The family eventually sent Abrego Garcia’s brother Cesar and later him to the U.S. after the gang repeatedly tried to recruit him, immigration court documents stated.

Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. as an undocumented person from El Salvador around 2011, according to his lawyers, and made his way to Maryland to join his older brother, a U.S. citizen.

Abrego Garcia’s emigration from El Salvador was the subject of an October 2019 immigration hearing. He had been arrested while looking for work and turned over to ICE following allegations about his gang membership.

ICE argued against his release because local police in Maryland had “verified” his gang membership, court records said. But his attorney pushed back at the time — as his current attorney has, too — against the claim, which relied on a confidential informant’s allegations.

The informant alleged that Abrego Garcia belonged to an MS-13 chapter in New York, where his attorney said he had never lived.

He applied for asylum but was denied by an immigration judge because he did not apply within one year of entering the United States.

But that judge did grant “withholding of removal,” which would allow him to live in the U.S. and work lawfully, on the basis of the likely threats he faced if returned to El Salvador.

‘Just ask them nicely’

ICE has long targeted criminal gangs, but pressure has ramped up since Trump took office.

His administration entered a reported $6 million agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele this year to begin accepting deportees, including alleged members of Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua, for detention in its notorious prison.

The administration has said it does not plan to try and bring him back.

In the brief filed Thursday, Abrego Garcia’s attorney wrote: “just ask them nicely to please give him back to us. It is inexplicable that Defendants have not done so already.”

The brief pointed out that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem recently visited the prison, where she recorded a video standing in front of a cell full of inmates.

As a result, Abrego Garcia’s attorney asked in court papers: “How can Defendants ask this Court to find as a matter of law that there is no possible redress for Plaintiff’s injuries, when one Defendant stood within the same prison walls as him, after this action was filed, after this Court’s first scheduling conference in this case, and made no effort to try?”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.