By BEN FINLEY

In the 22 days since Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador, his young autistic son has sought comfort in the scent of his missing father’s clothes.

“Although he cannot speak, he shows me how much he missed Kilmar,” Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said in court documents. “He has been finding Kilmar’s work shirts and smelling them, to smell Kilmar’s familiar scent. He has been crying and acting out more than usual.”

Abrego Garcia, 29, who worked as a sheet metal apprentice and was pursuing his license to become a journeyman, was pulled over in an Ikea parking lot and arrested on March 12, with his 5-year-old son in the car.

President Donald Trump’s administration acknowledged Monday that sending Abrego Garcia to his native El Salvador was an “administrative error.” An immigration judge in 2019 had granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador, where Abrego Garcia was likely to face persecution by local gangs.

Despite this, White House officials have argued against bringing him back, alleging without showing proof that Abrego Garcia has ties to the MS-13 gang. The administration further says it lacks the power to seek his return from El Salvador’s government.

Abrego Garcia’s family and attorneys have denied any gang ties and argue that the U.S. has little evidence to support its claim.

His deportation and the government’s admission of its error sparked immediate uproar.

“No one should be deported to the very country where a judge determined they will face persecution,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, wrote on the social platform X on Tuesday. “It’s outrageous that due process means nothing to the federal administration. They’ve admitted to making an error and I urge them to correct it.”

Moore added that “we can be pro-public safety and pro-Constitution at the same time.”

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Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador around 2011, “fleeing gang violence,” according to his lawyers, and made his way to Maryland to join his older brother, a U.S. citizen.

Abrego Garcia’s emigration from El Salvador was the subject of an October 2019 immigration hearing after he was arrested while looking for work and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following allegations about his gang membership.

ICE had argued against his release at a court hearing following the arrest because local police in Maryland had “verified” his gang membership, his lawyers’ complaint said. Abrego Garcia subsequently filed for asylum, while his lawyer submitted a “voluminous evidentiary filing establishing his eligibility for protection and contesting the unfounded allegation of gang membership,” the complaint stated.

An immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request in October 2019 but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador. He was released after ICE did not appeal.

Abrego Garcia later married Vasquez Sura, who is a U.S. citizen, and the couple are parents to their son and her two children from a previous relationship.

By MATT BROWN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Cory Booker ended his record-setting speech the same way he began it, more than 25 hours earlier: by invoking the words of his mentor, the late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis.

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“He endured beatings savagely on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, at lunch counters, on freedom rides. He said he had to do something. He would not normalize a moment like this,” Booker said of Lewis’ work as a young activist during the Civil Rights movement. “He would not just go along with business as usual.”

“He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation,” Booker said.

A break from “business as usual” was what Booker had in mind as he performed a feat of political endurance, holding the Senate floor for 25 hours and 5 minutes while delivering a wide-ranging critique of President Donald Trump and his policies.

In doing so, Booker of New Jersey broke the record for longest Senate floor speech, a mark that had belonged for decades to Strom Thurmond, the avowed segregationist from South Carolina who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Booker said he’d been aware of Thurmond’s record since first coming to the Senate in 2013 — a room near the Senate chamber is still named for him — and it bothered him.

“It seemed wrong to me,” Booker said. “It always seemed wrong.”

Booker, a Black progressive, spoke about his roots as a descendant of both slaves and slave-owners as he invoked the Civil Rights movement, implicitly linking Lewis’ steadfast resistance to Jim Crow to the modern-day opponents of Trump’s reshaping of government and society.

Throughout his speech he read letters from Americans about the impact that Trump’s agenda is having on their lives, drawing historical parallels and warning that the country faces a “looming constitutional crisis.”

“This is a moral moment,” Booker said. “It’s not left or right; it’s right or wrong.”

As Booker held the floor, dozens of members of the Congressional Black Caucus flanked the back of the Senate chamber in support, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Maxine Waters. Other CBC members kept close to the floor, including Sens. Angela Alsobrooks, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Raphael Warnock.

Before Booker surpassed Thurmond’s 68-year-old record, Jeffries said Booker’s speech was “an incredibly powerful moment … because he is fighting to preserve the American way of life and our democracy. And the record was held by Strom Thurmond who was actually defending Jim Crow segregation.”

Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., a close friend of Lewis who represented the neighboring district in metropolitan Atlanta, said Booker’s speech was “an act of resistance.”

“The American people want to see us as their representatives do everything we can to resist the encroachment on our liberties and the taking away of benefits,” Johnson said.

Booker’s speech captured attention at a time when Democrats have grown frustrated and despondent at their inability to stop Trump’s plans. Locked out of power in Congress and the executive branch, Democrats have struggled with how to take on Trump and the slashing of government being carried out by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.

Grassroots liberal organizers have been urging major Democratic figures to take a more combative approach. Some hoped that Booker’s speech would offer the party lessons going forward.

Booker “is reminding all of America and his own party, not simply to stand for what we’re against, but to stand up for what we believe in,” said Brittany Packnett Cunningham, an activist who helped lead the 2014 protests against police brutality in Ferguson, Mo.

“I think he recognized that people are looking for our leaders to have the moral clarity to declare that what’s happening is wrong, and to determine, to do something about it,” she said.

As Booker’s marathon speech drew to a close, he recalled the last conversation he ever had with Lewis, who was known for his acts of civil disobedience in Congress throughout his career until his passing in 2020.

Booker recalled telling Lewis, “we’ll do everything possible to make you proud.” And he said he had no doubt what Lewis’ message would be if he were alive today.

“John Lewis would say, do something,” Booker said.

“He wouldn’t treat this moral moment like it was normal.”

By BRIAN WITTE

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A federal judge who had ordered the Trump administration to reinstate fired federal probationary employees across the country at more than a dozen agencies has narrowed the scope of his ruling so it now applies to workers in the 19 states and the District of Columbia that challenged the mass dismissals.

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U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday night that protects those workers while the lawsuit continues.

“Only states have sued here, and only to vindicate their interests as states,” Bredar wrote. “They are not proxies for the workers.”

The order requires the 18 agencies originally named in the lawsuit to follow the law in conducting any future reductions in force. Bredar has now added the Defense Department and the Office of Personnel Management to that number.

Bredar previously found that the firings amount to a large-scale reduction subject to specific rules, including giving advance notice to states affected by the layoffs.

The lawsuit contends the mass firings will cause irreparable burdens and expenses on the states and the district because they will have to support recently unemployed workers and review and adjudicate claims of unemployment assistance.

“When the Trump Administration fired tens of thousands of federal probationary employees, they claimed it was due to poor work performance. We know better,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat who is leading the case. “This was a coordinated effort to eliminate the federal workforce –- even if it meant breaking the law.”

At least 24,000 probationary employees have been terminated since Trump took office, the lawsuit alleges.

The government is appealing the case to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Republican administration argues that the states have no right to try to influence the federal government’s relationship with its own workers. Justice Department lawyers argued the firings were for performance issues, not large-scale layoffs subject to specific regulations.

The administration is already appealing to the Supreme Court a similar order from a judge in California to reinstate probationary workers. The Justice Department asserts that federal judges cannot force the executive branch to reverse its decisions on hiring and firing. Still, the government has been taking steps to rehire fired workers under those orders.

Probationary workers have been targeted for layoffs across the federal government because they’re usually new to the job and lack full civil service protection.

The states suing the Trump administration include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez now possess a relatively clear path to becoming the controlling owners of the Timberwolves and Lynx.

A source confirmed majority owner Glen Taylor has agreed to transfer ownership, declining to take further legal action after losing the arbitration ruling handed down in February. That ruling concluded Taylor was not within his rights to call off the deal last year.

The ownership group led by Lore and Rodriguez is set to attain 100% control of the organization at the $1.5 billion purchase price originally agreed upon by the two sides back in 2021.

ESPN reported the NBA has started the transfer process on its end, which will ultimately include a board of governors vote that is expected to pass with ease.

The Timberwolves and Lynx now have complete clarity, and Lore and Rodriguez can now move forward with their future plans for the two teams. Likely included in those in the future: A push for a new area.

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