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    Defense Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia Ask Judge to Release Him Pretrial

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    The request came as lawyers in Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s separate civil case were poised to ask a different judge to hold the Trump administration in contempt for sidestepping one of her orders.Defense lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant who was recently brought back to the United States to face a federal indictment after being wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador, said in court papers on Wednesday that he should remain free from custody as he awaits trial.The papers, filed in Federal District Court in Nashville, amounted to the opening salvo of efforts by the defense lawyers to challenge the charges that were filed last week against Mr. Abrego Garcia.“With no legal process whatsoever, the United States government illegally detained and deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia and shipped him to the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) in El Salvador, one of the most violent, inhumane prisons in the world,” the lawyers wrote.“The government now asks this court to detain him further,” they went on, asking Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., who is handling the criminal case, to deny the request. Judge Crenshaw is set to hold a hearing on Friday to arraign Mr. Abrego Garcia and to hear arguments about whether to detain him before the trial.Mr. Abrego Garcia, a metalworker who was living in Maryland when he was arrested on March 12 and summarily deported three days later to El Salvador, had for weeks been trying through lawyers representing him in a separate civil case to enforce a court order instructing the Trump administration to take active measures toward securing his freedom.But after the administration repeatedly sought to sidestep and delay complying with that order, the Justice Department abruptly changed course. Top department officials announced on Friday that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been brought back to the United States to stand trial on charges of taking part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle thousands of undocumented immigrants across the country as a member of the violent street gang MS-13.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Energy Costs Surge, Eastern Governors Blame a Grid Manager

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      For decades, a little-known nonprofit organization has played a central role in keeping the lights on for 65 million people in the Eastern United States.Even some governors and lawmakers acknowledge that they were not fully aware of how much influence the organization, PJM, has on the cost and reliability of energy in 13 states. The electrical grid it manages is the largest in the United States.But now some elected leaders have concluded that decisions made by PJM are one of the main reasons utility bills have soared in recent years. They said the organization had been slow to add new solar, wind and battery projects that could help lower the cost of electricity. And they say the grid manager is paying existing power plants too much to supply electricity to their states.Some governors have been so incensed that they have sued PJM, drafted or signed laws to force changes at the organization, or threatened to pull their states out of the regional electric grid.The Democratic governors of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania sharply criticized the organization in recent interviews with The New York Times and in written statements. And the Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, called on the organization to fire its chief executive in a letter obtained by The Times.“PJM has lost the plot,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said in an interview. In another interview, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said about PJM, “I am angry.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Leap Together’: Kermit the Frog Gives a Graduation Speech

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      The cheery muppet donned a tiny cap and gown to inspire students at the University of Maryland. “Life is like a movie. Write your own ending,” he said.Kermit took the podium in a muppet-size formal cap and gown on Thursday to deliver a commencement speech at the University of Maryland, the alma mater of his creator, Jim Henson.Stephanie S. Cordle/University of Maryland, via Associated PressAt graduation ceremonies this month all across the United States, students listened to sage advice dispensed by esteemed alumni and distinguished speakers. The Class of 2025 at the University of Maryland heard from a different kind of celebrity: Kermit the Frog.He took the podium in a muppet-size formal cap and gown on Thursday to deliver a commencement speech to the graduating students at the university’s football stadium. You might call the campus his birthplace: Jim Henson, the creator of “The Muppet Show,” was a student at the University of Maryland when he first built Kermit, using his mother’s coats and a ping pong ball cut in half. Mr. Henson, Kermit said on Thursday, “had a hand in literally everything I did.”News that the famously cheery frog puppet would be delivering the “Ker-mencement,” as some students called it, was met with mixed reviews on campus. Some wondered if the speech, penned by a Muppets writer and voiced by the puppeteer Matt Vogel, was an effort by the university to sidestep the difficult issues confronting American higher education, like the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal funding and cancellation of some international student visas.The University of Maryland said it had chosen Kermit to deliver its commencement address to honor the legacy of Mr. Henson, who died in 1990.Kermit had plenty of words of wisdom, and some ribbing, for the Class of 2025 from a muppet’s life of swamp-swimming and hanging out on Sesame Street. One piece of advice, he said, was sharing life with the right people — even a spotlight-hogging pig. (Miss Piggy, Kermit told “CBS Mornings” before his address, was not among the crowd but “summering on a beach somewhere exotic.”)From the lectern on Thursday, he said, “Life is not a solo act; no, it’s not. It’s a big, messy, delightful ensemble piece, especially when you are with your people.” He called on the graduates to help each other whenever possible. “Life is better when we leap together,” he said. Kermit has hit the public speaking circuit before, including delivering the commencement speech in 1996 at Southampton College, then part of Long Island University. His friends on Sesame Street, from Grover to Cookie Monster, have also delivered their own addresses to graduating classes.He told students to stay connected to their loved ones and to their dreams, “no matter how impossible they seem.”“Life is like a movie. Write your own ending,” he said. “Keep believing, keep pretending.”He finished by leading the audience in a singalong to “Rainbow Connection.” More

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      Maryland Governor Vetoes Reparations Bill

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      Wes Moore, the nation’s lone sitting Black governor, diverged from fellow Democratic governors in rejecting a measure that would have studied reparations.Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland has vetoed legislation that sought to make recommendations on how to remedy the harms caused by slavery and racial discrimination, a notable setback in the movement for reparations delivered by the nation’s only sitting Black governor.The move on Friday sets Mr. Moore apart from other Democratic governors who have approved similar measures in recent years and comes as the party grapples with the role that identity politics played in its widespread electoral losses last year.The bill would have created a commission to research how many Maryland residents have ancestors who were enslaved in the state and recommend reparations that could have included formal apologies, monetary compensation, property tax rebates, college tuition waivers or assistance buying a home, among other possibilities.Calling it a “difficult decision,” Mr. Moore said he vetoed the bill because the state had sufficiently studied the legacy of slavery.“The scholarship on this topic is both vast in scope and robust in scale,” he wrote in a veto message.“While I appreciate the work that went into this legislation, I strongly believe now is not the time for another study. Now is the time for continued action that delivers results for the people we serve.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      36 Deaths in Police Custody Should Have Been Called Homicides, Report Finds

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      An audit of deaths in Maryland found that in cases of people who died after being restrained by the police, medical examiners often classified the deaths as natural or accidental.Medical examiners in Maryland miscategorized dozens of deaths that happened in police custody over the past two decades, according to a report released by state officials on Thursday.At least 36 of those deaths should have been called homicides, the report said. Instead, medical examiners had classified them as accidental, or as a result of natural or undetermined causes.The report, 70 pages long, capped a yearslong audit that revisited medical examiners’ reports over 17 years ending in 2019 — a time period matching Dr. David R. Fowler’s tenure as Maryland’s chief medical examiner — and found evidence of racism and pro-police bias.Anthony Brown, Maryland’s attorney general, said at a news conference on Thursday that medical examiners had been less likely to call a death a homicide if the person who died was Black, or if he or she had died after being restrained by police officers.“These findings have profound implications across our justice system,” Mr. Brown said. “They speak to systemic issues rather than individual conduct.”Dr. Fowler did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. He was not solely responsible for the decisions made by medical examiners during his tenure, and in the past he has defended the work of the pathologists in his office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Maryland Hit Its 30×30 Goal

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      Nine states have set goals to conserve 30 percent of their land by 2030. Maryland got there first.The protected land includes a one-acre fish hatchery at Unicorn Lake in eastern Maryland and the sprawling Green Ridge State Forest in the west. It includes shorelines, farms and woods around Naval Air Station Patuxent River, and the Chesapeake Forest Lands, some 75,000 wooded acres that are home to species like bald eagles and the once-endangered Delmarva fox squirrel.None of it can be developed, and all of it has helped Maryland reach a landmark conservation goal six years ahead of schedule, before any other state that’s joined an effort known as “30 by 30.”The program is part of a global initiative to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s land and waters by 2030. In 2023, Maryland joined the effort and a year later, Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, announced that the goal had already been met. Nearly 1.9 million acres of land has been permanently protected from development, and the state has set a new target, to conserve 40 percent of its land by 2040. More

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      After Meeting Wrongly Deported Man, Van Hollen Accuses Trump of Defying Courts

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      Senator Chris Van Hollen on Sunday accused the Trump administration of “outright defying” court orders to return a wrongly deported Maryland man whom Mr. Van Hollen met with in El Salvador last week, and he urged the administration to stop releasing unfavorable records about the man.“They are flouting the courts as we speak,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing.”Mr. Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, traveled to El Salvador last week to press for the release of the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison in March in what an administration lawyer described as an “administrative error.”A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to take a more active role in bringing back Mr. Abrego Garcia, a few days after the Supreme Court ruled that the government should “facilitate” his return from El Salvador.Instead, the White House has publicized an allegation of domestic abuse from Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife from 2021, when she sought a protective order. Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife said last week that the two “were able to work through this situation privately.”The administration also cited a police filing from a Tennessee trooper who stopped Mr. Abrego Garcia on a highway in 2022 and raised suspicion of human trafficking. Federal law enforcement officials instructed the trooper not to detain him, and Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife has said he routinely drove workers to their jobs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Senator says trip to El Salvador was to support Kilmar Ábrego García’s due process

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      Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US.The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.But in an interview with ABC’s This Week, Van Hollen, a Maryland senator, stressed that the government had presented no evidence linking Ábrego García to MS-13 in federal court. “Mr President,” the senator said, “take your facts to court, don’t put everything out on social media.”Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Van Hollen said Trump’s “argument that you can’t fight gang violence and uphold people’s constitutional rights at the same time. That’s a very dangerous view. If we deny the constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens the constitutional rights of everyone in America.”Van Hollen, who returned to the US on Friday after meeting with Ábrego García, has accused administration officials of lying about Ábrego García’s case in attempt to distract from questions about whether his rights were violated when he was deported to El Salvador last month.“I’m for whatever gives him his due process rights,” Van Hollen told the outlet. “An immigration judge in 2019 said he should not be deported to El Salvador because that would put his life at risk from gang members like MS-13.“The Trump administration did not appeal that immigration judge’s order to keep him in the United States. He is here legally now, has a work permit, is a sheet metal worker, has a family, and three kids,” he said.“I am fine with whatever result happens as long as he is given his due process rights under the constitution,” Van Hollen added. The administration has said Ábrego García’s deportation was an “administrative error” and the supreme court has ordered that the government “facilitate” his return, setting up a contentious debate of what that means in practical terms.As Van Hollen made the rounds of political shows on Sunday, he expanded on the theme of a constitutional crisis. On NBC’s Meet the Press he was asked if the US was in constitutional crisis with the Trump administration.“Oh, yes, we are. They are very much flouting the courts as we speak. As the courts have said, facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing. Yes, they’re absolutely in violation of the court’s orders as we speak,” he said.“My whole point here is that if you deprive one man of his constitutional rights, you threaten the constitutional rights of everybody,” Van Hollen said later to Fox News Sunday host, Shannon Bream. “I would hope that all of us would understand that principle – you’re a lawyer. I’m not vouching for the individual, I’m vouching for his rights.”On ABC’s This Week, Van Hollen was asked if he had walked into a trap when García was brought to his hotel for an hour-long meeting and the pair were pictured with margaritas. The senator said the drinks were placed there by a government official for the photos, and not touched, and added that the trip wasn’t a trap because his purpose had been to meet with García so he could “tell his wife and family he was okay”.“That was my goal. And I achieved that goal,” he said.But he added that “the Salvadorian authorities tried to deceive people. They tried to make it look like he was in paradise. They actually wanted to have the meeting by the hotel pool originally.”The senator also accused Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, of “lying through his teeth” about Ábrego García, and strongly rejected comments by Gavin Newsom, the California governor seen as a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, who said that it was politically dangerous for Democrats to defend the wrongly deported man.“I think what Americans are tired of, is people who want to put their finger to the wind to see what’s going on,” the senator said. “I would say that anyone that’s not prepared to defend the constitutional rights of one man, when they threaten the constitutional rights of all, doesn’t deserve to lead.”After the meeting, President Nayib Bukele post the image on X, writing that García “miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Senator Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!”Van Hollen said the venue for the meeting and the subsequent picture “just goes to show the lengths that Bukele and Trump will go to try to deceive people about what this case is all about”.On Friday, the White House mocked Van Hollen by annotating a headline about his Thursday meeting with García. “Fixed it for you, New York Times,” the White House X account shared. “Oh, and by the way, Chris Van Hollen – he’s NOT coming back.”The annotated headline changes “Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador” included crossing out “Wrongly” in red ink and replacing the words “Maryland Man” with “MS-13 Illegal Alien”. They also added “Who’s Never Coming Back.”But Ábrego García’s deportation was also facing opposition from Republicans. On Sunday, Louisiana senator John Kennedy was asked on Meet The Press if Ábrego García should be returned to the US.Kennedy said that Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador and calls for Ábrego García to be returned to the US were “utterly and gloriously wrong” and said that “most of this gauzy rhetoric is just rage bait. Unless you’re next level obtuse, you know that Mr García is never coming back to the United States, ever.”But Kennedy conceded that Ábrego García’s deportation “was a screw up”, adding that “the administration won’t admit it, but this was a screw up. Mr Garcia was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador. He was sent to El Salvador.” But he said Democrats’ response was typical.“The Democrats say, ‘Look, you know, we told you, Trump is a threat to democracy’. This is going to happen every other Thursday afternoon. I don’t see any pattern here. I mean, you know, some day pigs may fly, but I doubt it,”” he added. More

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      Kilmar Ábrego García ‘traumatized’ by threats in prison, Maryland senator says

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      Wrongly deported Salvadoran man Kilmar Ábrego García has been held incommunicado and faced threats in prison that left him “traumatized”, a Democratic senator said Friday after returning from meeting him in El Salvador.Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the state Ábrego García had been living in with his US citizen wife and son until he was deported last month in what the Trump administration conceded was an “administrative error”, traveled to the central American country this week to see his constituent. After initially rejecting his request to meet Ábrego García and preventing him from traveling to the prison where he was being held, president Nayib Bukele’s government on Thursday facilitated a meeting at Van Hollen’s hotel.“His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted. He said he felt very sad about being in a prison because he had not committed any crimes,” Van Hollen said at a press conference at Dulles international airport outside Washington DC.He recounted speaking to Ábrego García about his wellbeing, and informing him of the controversy caused by his arrest and Donald Trump’s refusal to let him back into the United States, in spite of a supreme court ruling saying the president should “facilitate” his return.The senator said Ábrego García told him about how he had been arrested by federal agents after a traffic stop while driving with his five-year-old son, who has autism. He was taken to Baltimore, then Texas, where he was shackled and placed with other deportees on an aircraft where they could not see out the windows. The plane flew to El Salvador, where, Ábrego García said, he was taken to the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) and put in a cell with about 25 other people.“He said he was not afraid of the other prisoners in his immediate cell, but that he was traumatized by being at Cecot and fearful of many of the prisoners in other cell blocks who called out to him, and taunted him in various ways,” Van Hollen said, adding that Ábrego García otherwise appeared to be in sound health.Just more than a week ago, Ábrego García was moved to another prison in the city of Santa Ana, where conditions are better, but he still has no contact with the outside world, Van Hollen said. He has also not been told whether he is being charged with a crime, or how long he will be detained.“They haven’t told him anything about why he was sent or how long he would be there,” the senator said.Van Hollen described himself as motivated to make the trip both out of a desire to relay Ábrego García’s condition to his family, and outrage that the Trump administration had deported him despite a judge granting him protection from removal, over a “well-founded fear of future persecution” from gangs in El Salvador, and was now refusing to bring him back.“This case is not only about one man, as important as that is. It is about protecting fundamental freedoms and the fundamental principle in the constitution for due process, that protects everybody who resides in America,” Van Hollen said. “This should not be an issue for Republicans or Democrats. This is an issue for every American who cares about our constitution.”On Thursday, the federal appeals judge James Wilkinson, an appointee of Republican president Ronald Reagan, wrote an opinion blasting the administration’s conduct in the case as litigation over Ábrego García’s deportation continued.“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” he wrote.The Trump administration has countered the criticism by claiming that Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 criminal gang, with the White House posting on social media that he was “NOT coming back”.Trump administration officials also seized on a claim from Bukele that Van Hollen and Ábrego García drank margaritas during their meeting, which the senator took pains to refute, saying the drinks had been placed on their table by a Salvadoran government employee.“Let me just be very clear: neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us,” he said, adding that the glass placed in front of Ábrego García contained less liquid, as if trying to create the impression that he had drunk from it.“But this is a lesson into the lengths that president Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on. And it also shows the lengths that the Trump administration, or the president, will go to, because when he was asked about a reporter about this, he just went along for the ride.”Van Hollen was joined at the airport by Ábrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who brushed away tears as the senator described meeting her husband. At the White House earlier in the day, Trump had read from a domestic violence protective order Vasquez filed in 2021, which she has said stemmed from a rough patch in their marriage that they later worked through.“When I asked him, what was the one thing he would ask for in addition to his freedom, he said he wanted to talk to his wife,” Van Hollen said of his meeting with Ábrego García. “I told him I would work very hard to make that happen.” More