Lawfare Daily: Roger Parloff and Anna Bower Talk Abrego Garcia

[Intro]

Anna Bower: She wants discovery because she thinks she rightly thinks that the government has not complied with her request for information about what it is that they've done, what potential steps they will do, and you know what his custodial status is.

Benjamin Wittes: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes with Lawfare senior editors Roger Parloff and Anna Bower.

Roger Parloff: The real problem, of course, I say, you know, she's gonna eventually lower the boom. We don't know if there is a boom—that when the contemnors are executive, high executive officials doing what the president wants and you have a, a Congress that won't do anything, you know, maybe there is no remedy here.

Benjamin Wittes: On April 15, Judge Paula Xinis held a hearing in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. In the immediate aftermath of the hearing, I sat down with Roger and Anna who had attended it to debrief on what happened.

[Main podcast]

Hey folks, just a quick update on a few matters that happened after we recorded this. First, Judge Xinis issued an order clarifying that she did not use the word facilitate in the highly limited sense that the government interpreted the phrase, but meant something broader. Number two: the following day, which is to say April 16, the government noticed an appeal in the matter seeking to take her April 10 order up the appellate ladder.

Anna and Roger have just emerged from the hearing before Judge Xinis, and I wanna start with breaking news from Roger's feed, Twitter feed, which is that we now know how to pronounce the judge's name. So Roger, what did you learn and how did you learn it?

Roger Parloff: I spoke to a clerk in the court and she sounded authoritative and she said it's pronounced see-knees.

Benjamin Wittes: So you heard it here first, people, this is news you can only get on Lawfare Live—everything you've heard everywhere else is wrong. The judge's name is Paula Xinis. And just think your eyes and your knees. Alright, we're done.

Alright, let's start with just an overview of what happened. The judge walks in and seems to know exactly where she's going. Does that seem right to you?

Roger Parloff: I think that's right. She was much more calm than I expected, very deliberative. I mean like Boasberg was calm also, but he was seething, you could tell. You could not tell that she was seething, although she probably was. She was much more controlled.

It was pretty obvious she's already got an order, nine-tenths written that she's gonna release this evening ordering discovery, but she just controlled, asked the plaintiffs, you have a motion pending, do you want to speak first? The motion, the plaintiff's lawyer—who was not Sandoval-Moshenberg, who is is off this week, but Rina Gandhi from the same firm—and she actually only mentioned the request for discovery. She didn't even mention the request to, for a show cause order, which would commence contempt proceedings. And then the judge obviously thought, you know, yes, that was the wavelength she was on.

Do you want to take it from here? Or, or-

Anna Bower: Yeah. I mean, look, she, she turned to Drew Ensign on this point. He attempted to make the argument that this, there's a, a pure matter, a pure question of law here. The government in many of its filings has, and its response to the plaintiff's motion has suggested that there is this debate over what facilitate actually means, because that's the term that the judge ultimately amended her order, that the government has to facilitate the return or release from custody in El Salvador of Abrego Garcia.

So, Ensign raised this question of whether discovery is even needed because they think that there's this question of law. There are questions about whether or not the judge has authority to, you know, compel them to request from El Salvador, El Salvador, a foreign sovereign, that they release this guy. The judge of course responded that, but I haven't even gotten there, I haven't compelled you to request anything; you know, we're just looking at, you know, what steps have you taken and is that sufficient to, to show that you've complied with my order.

Roger, am I missing anything there in terms of the general gist of Ensign’s arguments?

Roger Parloff: No, I think that's right. I wasn't quite clear when she said we weren't there yet. I, I think she—we'll have to look at the transcript, whether she said, I haven't ordered them to release him, we, we aren't there yet. I don't know. Maybe you're right that it was, I haven't even ordered you to request that they release him.

Anna Bower: I, I, I heard, so that's how I heard it. Again, we'll have to check the transcript, but I heard it as, you know, her saying we're not, we're not there yet. The plaintiffs have construed this order in that way, but you know, it's not that I have told you that you have to do this.

And then at one point she even mentioned the fact that, and this has been because in the government's view, that all they have to really do is just say oh, well, if he shows up at a port of entry, then we will take him into U.S. custody. And today in a status update, they said, and if he does that, then you know, we will remove him to a third country, or we will withhold his final order of removal—or we'll remove his final order of removal that prohibited him from being removed to El Salvador—and then redeport him to El Salvador.

But, you know, I, I think that in the judge's view, that's not sufficient and there was this debate about whether they have, you know, showed sufficient evidence of complying. That all goes to the facilitate question. At one point she said, you know, I'm not saying you've gotta have planes on the ground but I am saying I know that the government has done this in the past. This is not a problem that's uncommon in terms of getting people back who have been mistakenly or wrongly removed.

So there was kind of this back and forth between the judge and between Ensign about not only, you know, are there outstanding legal questions, but you know, it seems like this looming question that at some point the government is going to try to force her hand of answering the question of what exactly does facilitate mean?

And I, in my—again, Roger, correct me if you got a different, if you heard something different—but I think the judge was saying you know, we're not at the point of me saying, you have to ask this, but I think the Supreme Court was pretty clear in saying, you know, there are some steps that you've gotta take and you've, you've got to try to. And she read from the order several times that was issued by the Supreme Court.

And so again, you know, we're not quite at the stage yet where the judge is, as much as the government wants, ready to clarify what facilitate means. And she wants discovery because she thinks—she rightly thinks that the government has not complied with her request for information about what it is that they've done, what potential steps they will do, and you know what his custodial status is.

Roger Parloff: She was clear she's rejecting the idea that facilitate only means removing domestic obstacles. She's clear on that. And so, you know, she understands they're gonna make that argument; she rejects it. She thinks that it's, it's absolutely clear. And she kept asking, you know, the questions I put to you were the questions the Supreme Court said you needed to try to answer, which were what steps, steps have you taken, and they haven't answered that.

Benjamin Wittes: Right, and so their position is facilitate is constitutional only to the extent that it requires them to do nothing more than remove domestic barriers. Although they complicate their case because they then say and if he shows up at a domestic port of entry, we'll deport him again. So that they, they've removed, they say they've removed domestic barriers only then to reimpose them. But that seems to be their position.

Her position is it means, no, it clearly means more than that, and there's a lot of room between merely removing domestic barriers and anything that would come in the way of what the Supreme Court says, come anywhere near what the Supreme Court says the limits of the district court's authority. And so she kind of instructs the plaintiffs, okay, keep your discovery within that space and I will referee balls and strikes.

Is that a fair summary of where she came down? And I'm just working off of the two of your reporting, so.

Roger Parloff: And, and just to add one thing to what you were saying about this domestic, removing domestic obstacles, she also brought up that one of the things Bukele said yesterday was I, I can't smuggle him into your country. And she said, well, it doesn't sound like you are removing domestic obstacles, does it? So, you know, you tell me what you've done, and and so on.

But otherwise I mean, what you said is, is right.

Anna Bower: Yeah, I, I think that's right. And we, we did also get some more information from her about, you know, we're still waiting for a written order.

As Roger mentioned, it seems like this written order is probably more or less written. But she ultimately, where she came down on in terms of all, you know, the government saying we think that there's no need for discovery right now not only because what we've submitted is sufficient in terms of these affidavits, but also because we think there, there are still outstanding questions of law—she said, no, no, no. I think we need to go for expedited discovery.  She was very firm. It's gonna happen over the next two weeks, we're going to follow the federal rules of civil procedure. There will be interrogatories, there will be depositions, there may be requests for production.

And she gave a preview of, of the timeline that—again, we're waiting for confirmation of this in the written order, but it sounded like, from what I understand, she expects that at the very least, the people who will be deposed will be the people that the government has put forward in its daily, the declarations they've put forward in their daily status reports. That includes people like ICE official Robert Cerna, it includes the acting general counsel at DHS Joseph Mazarra,

Benjamin Wittes: The State Department official-

Anna Bower: A State Department official, Evan Katz—thank you, Ben. I, there may be one more that I'm, I'm forgetting, but at, at the very least, those individuals she wants deposed. She expects that those depositions would be completed by April 23.

You know, she made it clear that throughout all of this, the government will have every opportunity to do objections and responses and you know, preserve anything that it may want in terms of any kind of objections or opposition that it has. But she is very firm that she wants it to keep going, she wants it to be speedy and efficient.

She even said at one point—and correct me if I'm wrong, Roger—but I think she said at one point, even if the depositions need to take place at the courthouse and she can call balls and strikes, then she will.

Roger Parloff: Yeah.

Anna Bower: And she wants, by April 28th, I believe it was, that everything's gonna be completed. The plaintiffs will file a supplemented filing or briefing on their motion, then there will be a reply, and then they'll go from there. So that's the, the timeline that she set out today.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright. So I wanna ask you a question that's gonna sound weird to you guys, but actually responds directly to things that were tweeted and Blueskyed in response to the specific news that she had ordered this two week expedited discovery. And people responded with sort of irritation and disappointment to that timeline. They want her to rule now. And my reaction was, you know, as somebody who follows a lot of civil litigation, my god, two weeks of, that's a lot, that's a really fast compressed discovery timeline.

My assumption is that the plaintiffs were thrilled with this outcome. I noticed that they didn't object. But do we have any sense of whether you know, Abrego Garcia's lawyers here were irritated at the slow moving pace of civil litigation and the court system, or were they, this was all they could hope for reasonably, and they were excited by it.

Roger Parloff: They, they seemed to be happy with it. And like I said, the fact that they didn't even bring up contempt in their opening statement meant, I think, that they figured that we, we need to go step by step.

And it is frustrating, and she said, you know, there will be no vacation days; you know, every day is a business day, every day that passes is another day of your irreparable harm. So she's tough, but she's understanding that she's under a very minute scrutiny and she's gonna take it step by step, get the facts, and then lower the boom.

Anna Bower: I mean, also, look, she knows that eventually, like whatever it is that she orders, if she, if she finds that they are not in compliance, it's gonna go up to SCOTUS. And we've seen in recent orders from SCOTUS complete—the, the way the facts are presented are just for people who spend a lot of time in these hearings at the district court level—a lot of the facts when it goes up to SCOTUS are then ultimately portrayed in a, in a light that don't seem to be totally accurate.

And I, and I think that the idea here is that, you know, you move as fast as you can—and this is very fast for court speed—but you also move at a pace that's going to allow you to get the information that you need to build a record. Look, I, and, and I don't think that, that's not to say that Judge Xinis, or Xinis—thank you, Roger.

Benjamin Wittes: This is the kind of breaking news you only get at Lawfare.

Anna Bower: Right? This feels like the moment that we learned that Emil Bove is Bov-eh and not Bov-ie.

Roger Parloff: We might have broken that too.

Anna Bower: But look, you, this isn't to say that Judge Xinis has an outcome in mind yet, but she certainly seems to be very concerned and rightly so, that there is non-compliance and that the, someone, multiple people are acting in bad faith, and, and I think that she wants to build a record and, and have a airtight order that she can write around that record if it is in the end the case that she finds there's non-compliance.

Benjamin Wittes: Right. I, so I think the, the, the core issue for everybody who's confused about the timeline here and why it feels slow—and both of you, I'd be curious if you disagree with any of this—but the core of the issue is the following.

She knows that she issued an order to facilitate his release. She knows that she posed a certain set of questions about what's been done, about what steps are planned. She knows that he hasn't been released and she knows that those questions haven't been answered, but she doesn't know whether there for sure—I mean, you have an instinct that there have been no steps taken, but you actually don't know that for sure, and more than that, you can't prove it. All you can prove is that they've entered nothing in the record to show it. But there could be behind the scenes phone calls, there could be, you know, quiet diplomacy being on a good, I don't believe that, but it's, it's theoretically possible.

And more important, you don't know if—assuming that nothing has happened—you don't know who's responsible for that. Is that President Trump, you know, sending down through Stephen Miller, don't bring this guy back? Or is that people intuiting what they think he would want and maybe thinking you can ask, but wink, right? And so who's responsible? You can, you can kind of intuit that there's contemptuous behavior going on. But if you wanna hold somebody in contempt, you need to identify who specifically violated what court order and under what circumstance.

And this is an attempt—particularly if you're gonna hold them in contempt and then order them, order some coercive remedy—you have to figure out exactly who did what to whom. And what she's saying to the plaintiffs here is, don't go crazy, don't stomp on the president's constitutional authority to do foreign policy, but figure out the answer to this question and I'll back you and give you depositions. You got two weeks. Is that fair?

Roger Parloff: Yeah. And, and in fact she gave them four depositions but said they can apply for two more. So maybe that would be a way when there's more information, you could go up the line a little bit. She's gonna give them 15 interrogatories, up to 15 interrogatories, up to 15 document production requests. So maybe with that she can begin to get an idea of—if, if there was, let's keep an open mind, if, if there was defiance and contempt—who, who's responsible.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so let's talk about the government's response. Most of the conversation seemed to have been with Drew Ensign, is that right? 

Roger Parloff: 98%, I'd say.

Benjamin Wittes: And his position as I took it seemed to be number one, don't order discovery. Number two, if you do order discovery, let us appeal it first, stay it so that we can have an appeal over whether any discovery is appropriate. She rejects both of those and says, I'm gonna issue an order tonight on it.

And number three, he seems to fight her on the premise that they haven't done anything and his. At least as I read your guys' tweets, the evidence that they'd done anything was really limited to the text of the meeting in the Oval Office yesterday between President Trump and President Bukele. Is that correct?

Roger Parloff: That's what he was saying.

Anna Bower: That that, and then also the Mazzaro declaration that they filed today, he also pointed to as well. Specifically—I believe it was paragraph nine or paragraph 11, doesn't matter—the paragraph in which Mazzaro says something to the effect of, you know—and this was they, they keep dropping these little breadcrumbs of new information usually every day. It's something that's both new but also not somehow non-responsive to the judge's questions.

But so the one that they, they dropped today was a, effectively the same Mazzaro declaration that they submitted yesterday, but this one had a, a line that said if he shows up at a port of entry, then we will either re-deport him to a third country or to El Salvador again after his withholding of removal is removed. Which again, I mean, look, I'm not an immigration law expert other than paying attention to this case and some other cases we're following, but I don't-

Benjamin Wittes: Which makes you more of one than most people actually.

Anna Bower: But I, I don't think that it is, they're, they're basically using this same argument—that is a novel argument as I understand it—that all of a sudden if you are someone who is alleged to be a part of MS-13, which they've classified as a terrorist organization, then that somehow means that you're not able to have a withholding of removal, which is, is not something that as far as I'm aware is, is, you know, consistent with current law.

Roger Parloff: Well, I, I don't know if, if that's a law, I, it could be the law today, but it's not retroactive. You can't, you know, there's a final order that he has withholding of, of removal. So if you wanna go back to him and say, and argue to some judge, well, Rubio two months ago said that this gang is a terrorist group, so now you need to lift that. It doesn't sound like they plan to go through any legal process.

Anna Bower: Right, right. Yeah.

Roger Parloff: They just plan to, to just announce, no, it's gone and he's gone.

Anna Bower: Yes. And that's what, that's what I mean, but.

Benjamin Wittes: But I’m hung up on an antecedent question though. So the Supreme Court says he's gotta be put in the same position that he was before he was arrested, right. That you've gotta whatever facilitate his release means this was wrong, and you've gotta endeavor to put him in the same position.

And the government comes into court today and they make two arguments. One is that the president in an Oval, in the Oval Office didn't ask for his return, and in fact, justified or, you know, sat there while the president of El Salvador said he wouldn't smuggle him in—didn't request his return. So he's not, you know. But secondly, that if he showed up, they'd deported him again, which seems like two arguments that don't amount neither of them amount to, we are working to put him in the same position as he was.

And I'm curious for either of your sense of why., why they think that's an argument that will appeal to her, to the Fourth Circuit, or to nine justices who said, you gotta restore the status quo, or at least try to.

Roger Parloff: I mean, if he's right on the law, if there is, you know, if you came back and you had process and you went before a judge—I don't know if it would be an immigration judge or a federal Article III judge, or first the immigration judge, and then a, a federal district judge—but you know, and you could convince him okay, the real law is now he's a terrorist, ow he's not entitled to this, we'd like you to strip it of it.

I mean, all of that would be consistent with the Court's ruling as I read it. You know, it would be going through a process they could have gone through and didn't. But they, what, what they can't do is just, you know, bring him to the border and then, you know, say, poof, the, the withholding is gone, send him back. That would not be following the request. That's how I read it. 

Anna Bower: So I also will say Ben, too, it sounded to me like, like I think that what the government has stressed is not so much the fact of Trump not asking for return—although I think the plaintiffs have have pointed out that there's no evidence of an ask occurring—but they've pointed to you instead in that transcript the statement of Bukele, which is that, you know, how can I smuggle someone in? And then they pointed to Bondi's statements as well.

Benjamin Wittes: Right? But the, but, but that seems to me to be, I watched that thing live as I think did you guys. Like this did not strike me as the U.S. attempting to facilitate his freedom and return.

Anna Bower: Right.

Benjamin Wittes: It struck, struck me as the president asking his aides—his attorney general and his creepy Rasputin figure—to justify searingly justify his declination to ask for the guy's release, which he did not do. And then to punt the matter to him, who Bukele then pretends he doesn't understand the question. Bukele—who speaks perfect English by the way—suddenly thinks, suddenly can't understand, he's being asked to smuggle this guy into the United States, a terrorist into the United States.

And so if I were the district judge, or for that matter, Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito, and I had ordered them to facilitate his release and return, I would see that Oval Office meeting as them doing the opposite of facilitating his release and return.

Anna Bower: Well, look, no, but this—okay, look, anyone with eyes and ears who watch that understands what is happening.

But I think this goes to your earlier point 'cause right, you've got, in that meeting, you've got on the one hand, Trump and Pam Bondi saying that, oh, the U.S. doesn't have the power to interfere with a domestic sovereign you know, who has this guy in custody; we don't have the power to return him. And then you've got you know, the president of El Salvador saying, we, but I don't have the power to return him. And so it's a hot potato, right, of like, oh, we don't have the power, we don’t have the power.

Benjamin Wittes: It's three card monte.

Anna Bower: And anyone who's watching this knows what is happening. And the issue though, is that what you said earlier, Ben, that like—you know, I think actually if you're Samuel Alito or if you're Clarence Thomas, you are watching that thinking, oh, that's, you know, well, there, there, that's your answer: they couldn't facilitate the return. Because there's, there are ways in a written order you can cast a certain light on those interactions and of these facts to, to at least have some kind of plausible if like, you know, just blatantly wrong, perception or way of construing everything that's happened.

And so I think that goes back to your earlier point of that's why it's important to establish a more clear record of what has been done. Cause they have not said, other than that Oval Office meeting, what have they done. And, and so I think that's what Judge Xinis is trying to do here.

Roger Parloff: And I think they wanna get the contract. And if they refuse to produce the contract, I mean, there's already a lot on the record about the contract. You know, Bukele has mentioned that it's they're there for a year, renewable; you know, the AP says they've seen the contract, the $6 million for a year. They, they continue to send people down there; Kristi Noem visits.

And, and if they say no, it's a state secret—you know, at some point you don't have to forever litigate that. You can say, oh, I see they're acting in bad faith, this is idiocy and they're also going to probably invoke privileges. And that's why she said she's giving them the four people who have already submitted affidavits. Cause she's gonna say, how can it be privileged when you already produced them, they already gave a partial statement.

And so she's building a record of, of this. The, the, the real problem of course, I say, you know, she's gonna eventually lower the boom. We don't know if there is a boom. When the contemnors are executive, high executive officials doing what the president wants, and you have a, a Congress that won't do anything— you know, maybe there is no remedy here. That's the scary thing.

Anna Bower: And by and by by the way, I will say one other thing too. All of these people who have provided statements—not Robert Cerna maybe, but the other ones to some extent—they're all not really saying they have personal, personal knowledge.

Roger Parloff: Mm-hmm.

Anna Bower: They're all kind of saying it was relayed to me, or as I understand it. So I think we're going to get this chain where, you know, there, they might come in for depositions. There, there might be claims of privilege for at least some of them—the acting general counsel, for example, Ensign referred to maybe raising some privilege claims there.

But even if you get through all that, it is probably going to take us into a second stage potentially of discovery in which you've then gotta go after the people who actually have personal knowledge 'cause they've put forward people who seem to not really know anything.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so three questions to wrap up.

The first is, at what point does this process of investigation/discovery itself become a sufficient pain in the ass that the administration decides, hey, better just to have this guy sent back? Or do they love the pain because it puts them in confrontation with their favorite thing in the world, which is an Obama appointed district court judge who they can threaten and, you know, have people introduce impeachment resolutions against.

Is this the kind of thing that the process is itself the punishment, or is this the kind of thing that, that they love the process?

Roger Parloff: This gets a little beyond our bailiwick and into politics. And my, my sense is that they're very, very happy with the politics of this and that, that's why they're putting it on TV and there. So, I don't think it's painful to them.

And I, I do think they will, this 14 day timeline—they, I think they'll do everything to derail that. And, you know, Trump's lawyers are very good at stalling. That's why he's president. And so, it's gonna be very hard to keep this on a 14 day track.

Anna Bower: I'm gonna be a little bit more blunt than Roger and say they absolutely love this. Stephen Miller's loving it. He's going on TV every day, completely misrepresenting Supreme Court opinions that are quite clear. And seems to be having the time of his life doing it.

And so I don't think that this is seen as a problem; I think that it is seen as a part of an effort to—I mean, look, and I'm, this is speculation—but I think that it may be seen as an effort to suggest that district court judges and district court orders need not be followed.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, next question is the government, do you think, I, I took it that they're gonna take an emergency appeal from whatever order she puts out? She's gonna put out an order tonight that says facilitate means more than remove domestic barriers and by the way, you can throw him out as soon as he shows up again and they—I think they're gonna try to take an emergency appeal of that. Do you guys agree? And do you think that if they do that, that appeal has any legs or will they not be able to get a stay on this?

Roger Parloff: I thought, I mean initially he certainly was going in that direction. He said he wanted this, her to stay it while they seek appeal. Then he said some things that sounded like, you know, she was saying, do you have a problem with this, and she said, well, we'll work expeditiously. I assume like you, that they will try to take an appeal.

Now, ordinarily, if this were anybody else, I don't think, you know, there's—you can't appeal a discovery order, but he has appealed temporary restraining orders galore with success, both at I, I mean at least having his issues heard on the merits at the Court of Appeals level and then even at the Supreme Court level. So it seems like if he casts this as an Article II, you know, emergency—they're intruding on our Article II rights—it may go up. What do you think?

Anna Bower: Yeah, I mean, Roger mentioned you typically, you can't appeal discovery order, but I think it—and I'm interested to see how this written order is crafted, because the judge did say that she would respond to some of the arguments that Ensign has made, and I think that insofar as the government can construe that as some kind of order on a, a more substantive question than just a discovery order, then that's what they'll do and try to, you know, appeal. They've been successful in getting things that would not normally be appealable appealed, so we'll see.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, I think they are gonna appeal this, but I think it's gonna backfire on them. And here's why. Because as long as they just have this bare bones Supreme Court opinion, they can interpret it in this extravagant way and wax indignant from the Oval Office about how the Supreme Court sided with them nine to nothing and this district judge is, you know, boldly interfering with U.S. foreign policy.

The moment you ask the Supreme Court whether that's what they meant—which is what this argument over the word facilitate says—they're gonna say at some level, no, that's not what we meant. We meant that there's some reasonable inquiry into what you're doing that she's allowed to do. She's not allowed to, you know, take over the State Department.

And so they're gonna lose their whole rhetorical style. Their, their, their whole rhetorical energy comes from this lie that has its origins in the thinness and threadbare quality of the Supreme Court opinion. And by appealing this, they're gonna actually deprive themselves of that, at least at the Fourth Circuit level. That's my guess.

Alright, last question. You know, this case has been relentlessly in the news for the last, you know, several weeks. One thing about a discovery period is it tends to be pretty invisible. And if things go as she intends, you're gonna have two weeks where this case is just gonna vanish, 'cause you're gonna have closed depositions. There'll be some kind of a protective order probably entered as you usually do for discovery.

So how long do you expect? You know, Roger said, you said before that you didn't think this would really be containable to two weeks. Anna said you're gonna have to follow the chain and you may need more than four or six depositions. So how long are we gonna spend on this discovery question, which will be mostly invisible to the public?

Roger Parloff: Well, like, like Anna said, the, the goal is to have it completed and have this motion—which she delicately euphemistically calls the motion, everyone knows it's a contempt motion—coming up the 28th, and then they would respond the 30th and then she would set a hearing.

But one thing that we don't know, and maybe we'll find it out tonight when the order comes out, if it hasn't already is whether the daily useless status reports continue. The administration seems to use them as almost a campaign sort of, statement rather than a legal statement. I don't know if those continue. But no, I think you're right, there will be a sort of a blackout on the useful stuff for a little while.

Anna Bower: One thing I will say though is that not in a court of law, in the context of this case, I mean, there are some things going on with, you know, Senator Chris Van Hollen, I believe, has been suggesting that he might go to El Salvador. He's been trying to, you know, get a meeting with Bukele.

Like there's, there's some things that may happen because all the while, you know, Abrego Garcia is going to be stuck in the gulag in El Salvador while this discovery proceeding is playing out—which is why I think people are very understandably confused and upset about the length of this discovery period, even if it is very quick for the pace of the courts—but there, there may very well be things, Ben, that we learned through public reporting. You know, it may be possible that the AP who has obtained these memos and some of these contracts could publish them. I don't know if that's possible based on what, whatever deal or arrangement they have with their sources, that kind of thing—there are things that might prevent them from doing so—but there could be public reporting information that we learn in the interim period that is something to watch for.

Benjamin Wittes: We are going to leave it there. Greenbelt Bureau, Roger Parloff and Anna Bower. Thanks for joining us today.

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