CNN —

Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys are pushing to keep a civil case against the Trump administration alive so they can seek sanctions against officials for allegedly violating orders to return him from El Salvador, where he was wrongly deported earlier this year.

After the government returned Abrego Garcia to the US on Friday to face federal criminal charges in Tennessee, Justice Department attorneys told US District Judge Paula Xinis that she should pause all deadlines in the civil case while they readied a formal request for her to drop the matter entirely. His return, they argued, rendered the case moot.

But his return came just two days after Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who sits on the federal bench in Maryland, gave Abrego Garcia’s attorneys per

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