The judge overseeing the case of wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Wednesday granted a request from his attorneys to file a motion seeking sanctions against the government for failing to comply with discovery requests.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in April ordered the Trump administration to provide discovery evidence showing the process by which Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador despite him being issued a 2019 court order barring his deportation to his home country due to the fear of persecution.
Wednesday’s order from Xinis comes after Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said in a court filing that some of the discovery productions by the government include “highly redacted internal messages” and other materials that were classified as “Confidential or Attorney’s Eyes Only” – without a motion to designate the items as being under seal.
That would be a possible outcome but the fun one is the judges ability to prevent the normal withholding of evidence that isn’t directly requested. Instead the judge can say I (we both counsel and the judge) need to see everything and you can’t say no, anything but provided can be held directly against you and anything that should exist that doesn’t can be held as spoliated.
It’s a public docket so that would be fairly disastrous for every ice or hsi arrest.
And what happens when they still say no?
They need to actually be sent to jail to fear being sent.