The Trump administration on Monday implored a federal judge to reject any continued legal challenges leveled by Kilmar Abrego Garcia as he attempts to fight deportation.

In a 29-page motion with the bespoke title of “Defendants” Return to the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus,” the U.S. Department of Justice argued that, rather, Abrego Garcia can only pursue his claims through a specific process before an immigration judge.

Immigration judges are not the same as regular – or Article III – federal judges. Rather, they are fully creatures of statute under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and more appropriately a kind of federal officer. Whereas Article III judges are appointed by the president, immigration judges are simply employees of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), a subagency within the DOJ.

And, the Trump administration says, the INA and its framework limit what Abrego Garcia is entitled to receive at this point.

By now, the Maryland man’s high-profile litigation is a well-known subplot of the story of the second Trump administration. Abrego Garcia was part of a summary deportation flight to a prison notorious for torture in El Salvador, but his deportation violated multiple court orders – both specific to him and general to the flight in question.

A DOJ lawyer was sacked after admitting the Trump administration’s mistakes and, through a seesawing battle that has gone up the legal ladder all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and back down to various different district courts, Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States, promptly charged with unrelated crimes, and eventually released on bail before being taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) yet again late last month.

The latest chapters in the saga include a judicially-frustrated attempt to deport the father of three to Uganda – as the government remains insistent on its goals for widespread deportation of immigrants to third countries which are neither the U.S. nor the countries they hail from. Now, the latest proposed destination for Abrego Garcia is Eswatini, the African country formerly known as Swaziland.

After being taken back into custody, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys initiated a case in Maryland federal court – drawing the random assignment of U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, the Barack Obama appointee who oversaw his lawsuit to be returned to the country.

This time, the posture of Abrego Garcia’s case is a petition for writ of habeas corpus – essentially an argument he is being illegally detained.

But, the DOJ says, federal law precludes such a challenge.

The heart of the matter, as the government sees it, is that Abrego Garcia is subject to a final order of removal, or deportation. Both statute and precedent preclude using habeas petitions as avenues for redress when final deportation orders are in effect, the motion argues.

To hear the DOJ tell it, the REAL ID Act of 2005 was an effort by Congress to “expressly eliminate habeas review over all final orders of removal.” Similarly, a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case from 2011 interpreted the act’s change to immigration law to mean “Congress specifically prohibited the use of habeas corpus petitions as a way of obtaining review of questions arising in removal proceedings.”

“Petitioner’s claims are both procedurally barred and meritless—even unserious,” the motion reads. “[T]he INA does not permit—and indeed affirmatively bars—this collateral challenge to removal and detention. This Court should therefore permit those administrative procedures to play out while respecting Congress’s prohibition on interference in those procedures by federal district courts.”

The Trump administration also says Abrego Garcia is simply filing his habeas petition too early because “the Supreme Court permits detention pending removal for a presumptively reasonable period of six months before any additional procedures are potentially triggered.” In other words, the government says they can keep him in detention until the end of February 2025 before making a final decision about where he will be deported.

And as for that ultimate, non-El Salvador location, the government insists it is willing to work with Abrego Garcia, but complains that he is not acting in good faith with deportation officials.

From the motion, at length:

Petitioner’s actions also betray a level of gamesmanship to remain in the United States that this Court should not indulge. For example, while Petitioner claims that Costa Rica is his preferred country of removal, he simultaneously is expressing a “fear of persecution and torture” if removed to “Costa Rica.” Petitioner is thus claiming that his preferred destination country is somehow likely to persecute or torture him if he were sent there—a claim that, if he actually believed it, would presumably motivate him to choose a different destination. Indeed, Petitioner has already expressed putative fear of persecution or torture from more than twenty nations and has made clear that he may assert such fears for any country that he does not prefer—and indeed has even done so for the country that he putatively does prefer.

In sum, Abrego Garcia has expressed asylum law-based fears for 23 different countries offered by U.S. officials in a statutory, step-by-step process. Under this process, the would-be deportee is first allowed to suggest the country they might be removed to. However, if they don’t offer a suggestion, the government makes such a suggestion. That process has played out repeatedly in the present case, according to the DOJ.

Now, the government wants Xinis to shut Abrego Garcia down so he can finally be deported in accordance with a years-old order.

“Ultimately, this suit impermissibly seeks to delay the too-long-delayed execution of Petitioner’s 2019 final order of removal,” the motion goes on. “This Court should deny the Petition.”