The US Department of Justice (DOJ) suspended attorney Erez Reuveni on Saturday for failing to “zealously advocate on behalf of the United States.” The said failure refers to Reuveni’s open admission in court that the DOJ committed an administrative error by removing Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the US.
Garcia is an El Salvador national who first entered the US illegally, fleeing from the notorious gang, Barrio 18, that threatened Garcia’s family with death. Garcia’s family had moved three times to escape the gang’s capture.
Deportation proceedings had begun against Garcia in March 2019, at which point Garcia requested asylum and protection under the Convention Against Torture. In October 2019, the Board of Immigration Appeals (the board) granted Garcia “withholding of removal” status, which protects an individual from being returned to a country where he faces “clear probability of persecution.” The board agreed that Garcia is entitled to such protection because he is being targeted by Barrio 18.
The board’s decision was never appealed by Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which made it final in November 2019 — a point openly admitted by Reuveni. Reuveni further admitted the federal government was “legally prohibited” from removing Garcia from the US and that there is “no dispute that the [board’s] order could not be used to send” Garcia to El Salvador.
Nevertheless, Garcia was stopped by ICE officers while driving home from work and placed on arrest. The officers did not have a warrant and simply told him that his status had changed. Garcia received no prior notice of the removal and was promptly put “on a plane bound for the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
In a development folowing Reuveni’s suspension, US Judge Paula Xinis on Sunday ordered Garcia’s return to US and chided the DOJ for depriving Garcia of procedural protections guaranteed under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Xinis also highlighted the lack of desire on the part of the Trump administration to return Garcia to US, citing one of her exchanges with Reuveni:
THE COURT: Can we talk about, then, just very practically, why can’t the United States get Mr. Abrego Garcia back?
MR. REUVENI: Your Honor, I will say, for the Court’s awareness, that when this case landed on my desk, the first thing I did was ask my clients that very question. I’ve not received, to date, an answer that I find satisfactory.
Xinis added:
Defendants effectuated [Garcia’s] detention in one of the most notoriously inhumane and dangerous prisons in the world. Defendants even embrace that reality as part of its
well-orchestrated mission to use CECOT as a form of punishment and deterrence……particular to Abrego Garcia, the risk of harm shocks the conscience. Defendants have forcibly put him in a facility that intentionally mixes rival gang members without any regard for protecting the detainees from “harm at the hands of the gangs…” and then housed him among the chief rival gang, Barrio 18….the very gang whose years’ long persecution of Abrego Garcia resulted in his withholding from removal to El Salvador.
Xinis’s Sunday order follows her Friday order granting an injunction, which likewise demanded Garcia’s return. This latest order offers a more detailed explanation behind Xinis’s reasoning for her Friday order. The Justice Department had already asked the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to pause Judge Xinis’s order requiring the administration to return Garcia back to the US by 11:59 pm on Monday. Its request to Xinis to pause her own order while the Fourth Circuit considered the DOJ request was denied.
Both Reuveni and his supervisor, August Flentje, have since been placed on administrative leave for failing to zealously advocate the government’s position on this matter. Reuveni had just been promoted to Deputy Director at the Office of Immigration Litigation in October.