For those interested in the case, the good folks at Courtlistener.com have compiled the pleadings and docket sheets for both cases, to save you from paying Pacer fees.

www.courtlistener.com/docket/71191...

www.courtlistener.com/docket/70476...

Here is the Washington Post article reporting on it.
www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

Credibility is the coin of the realm for those who represent the interests of the United States in court. With more evidence of more misrepresentations to a court by Department of Justice lawyers, that credibility has been shattered.

Abrego's lawyers maintain that this misrepresentation is further "unmistakable proof" of the government's selective and vindictive prosecution resulting from his animus against him, resulting from challenging the government's original, unlawful deportation.

Previously, the government had offered Costa Rica as an option if he would plead guilty to the pending trafficking charge, which he declined to do.

As it turns out, Costa Rican officials had told the State Department since August that Abrego would be accepted and his civil rights respected.

In the government represented to the courts that Abrego's preferred country for deportation, Costa Rica, was unavailable so he must be deported to Liberia. Abrego, a Salvadorian who was living in Maryland with his American wife and children, has no ties to Liberia.

My pleasure! Still an open question as to whether it can be re-indicted at all.

The handbook and the US attorney’s manual are not binding per se, but in this instance it cites binding case law. So the indictment can be no broader than the one just dismissed.

Thank you!

😉thanks!

Paywalled article.

So valuable. I returned to college after retirement and am loving it. Thanks to the Virginia university system that waives tuition for those over a certain age!

link to the opinion. The discussion of the DOJ letter starts on page 19.
thearp.org/documents/19...

This is just another example of the destruction of the Department’s credibility during this Administration.

In the end, all of us will lose.

I and others have written about high profile matters in the last few months -- the Chicago litigation, in Abrego Garcia, and Comey, just to name three -- in which courts have taken the Department to task for its lack of integrity, credibility, and general competence.

That an Assistant Attorney General would author such a letter should be shocking to both lawyers and non-lawyers. The Department had a proud culture of getting it right on both the facts and law, and it was drilled into us that our integrity mattered.

"Indeed, even attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General—who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration—describe the DOJ Letter as ‘legally[] unsound,’ ‘baseless,’ ‘erroneous,’ ‘ham-fisted,’ and ‘a mess.’”

“It’s challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors."

The majority -- one appointed by President Obama and the other by President Trump -- had this to say about the letter DOJ sent to Texas: