Trump administration invokes state-secrets privilege in Kilmar Abrego Garcia case

Washington — The Trump administration appears to have invoked the state-secrets privilege to withhold information in the case involving the mistaken removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador and any efforts by the Trump administration to return him to the United States.

The administration's assertion of the privilege was revealed in an order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, which asked lawyers for Abrego Garcia and the Justice Department to file additional legal papers about the administration's "invocations of privilege, principally the state secrets and deliberative process privileges."

Xinis gave the two sides until Monday to submit the filings "addressing the legal and factual bases for the invocation of those privileges," including a request from Abrego Garcia's lawyers for the court to conduct a review of "the withheld documents." The judge also set a hearing for May 16 at the courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland.