Who is Paula Xinis, the judge ordering Trump to return a mistakenly deported immigrant?
Paula Xinis, seen in a Senate video still image, during her Senate confirmation hearing in 2015 for U.S. district judge for the District of Maryland. (U.S. Senate)
The judge hardly minced her words.
“Wholly illegal from the moment it happened,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis wrote Friday in describing the Trump administration’s mistaken deportation of a Maryland immigrant and husband of a U.S. citizen to a mega-prison in El Salvador.
Hours later, speaking to the government’s lawyers in her Maryland courtroom, Xinis said she wanted updates on where Kilmar Abrego Garcia was and how the government would try to return him to the United States—following an order she’d issued a week ago that on Thursday was backed by the Supreme Court.
“You can tell me what you can, what you can’t, and why,” she said. “But we’re going to make a record of what, if anything, the government is doing or not doing.”
Xinis’s admonishment of the government’s actions on deportation comes on the heels of similar pushback from a D.C. judge last month who ordered the government to halt flights from the United States to El Salvador. Her decision, and the administration’s failure so far to comply with it, sets up a potential clash between the federal judge in Maryland and President Donald Trump, who has publicly called for impeaching judges who rule against him.
Here’s what to know about Xinis before the case thrust her into the national spotlight, and what might come next.
Who is U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis?
Xinis was nominated to her position in 2015 by President Barack Obama. She was confirmed the next year by a vote of 53-34 in the Senate.
Originally from Mineola, New York, she attended Vassar College and the University of Virginia, where she graduated in 1991 “with highest distinction,” according to her U.S. District Court biography. She graduated from Yale Law School in 1997 and clerked for Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Diana Gribbon Motz.
“She was an extraordinarily able young lawyer, and I believe she’s an extraordinarily able district judge,” Motz said Friday. “She is thorough and she writes clearly, and I think her judgment is excellent.”
Motz, who is now a senior judge, said Xinis was “totally forthright” and “easy to work with,” without the ego that sometimes comes with high-achieving clerks.
At a time when there were “strong opinions on both sides of most legal issues,” Motz said, Xinis wasn’t doctrinaire.
“I think the really important thing to understand about her, how much pressure must have been brought upon her to trim her sails, to try to be more in the middle, more favorable to the administration, and she has [held] steadfast in what she believes,” Motz said. “That’s what we want judges to do, not be swayed by any political views. … I think she’s kind of a model for how judges should, and she has, in my experience, always acted this way.”
After clerking for Motz, Xinis worked as a lawyer for the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Maryland, according to her District Court biography. While there, she served as the research and writing attorney supervisor and director of training. Xinis lectured on topics such as effective sentencing mitigation, amendments to the United States sentencing guidelines and appellate advocacy, according to her biography.
She then entered private practice, joining the Baltimore firm of Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, becoming a partner in 2013. She handled complex civil actions and, in time, drew the ire of police in the city that would surface in her nomination process.
What was her confirmation process like?
Police organizations in Baltimore and Maryland came out against Xinis, according to a release at the time from Heritage Action, a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation. The group cited a letter to senators from the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police asserting that Xinis had showed “obvious disdain for the law enforcement profession” while representing people making accusations against police officers. The statewide FOP cited her work as a police complaint examiner in Washington, D.C.
On the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) spoke similarly.
“By all accounts she’s a nice person, has a number of admirers,” Sessions said. “I don’t question her integrity and had an exchange with her at the Judiciary Committee when she came before the committee. But I think that this nominee has perhaps the most hostile record toward police of any I’ve seen in a long time.”
Speaking in support of Xinis, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont) said it was important to add context about her time as a complaint examiner in Washington, when she sustained rulings against the police.
“Each one of her six determinations was sustained by the chief of police,” Leahy said. “None of them was overturned. Her decisions could have been appealed and overturned if they were incorrect, but they were not.”
The director of a large Maryland jail dealt with Xinis in 2020. What did she think?
In 2020, as covid-19 was spreading across the country, Xinis was assigned to oversee litigation filed against the Prince George’s County corrections director for allegedly failing to protect inmates in the county jail. The judge moved quickly to investigate the claims even as she seemed open-minded to the challenges faced by the jail staff and actions they’d already implemented.
“I thought she was very fair,” said the corrections director, Mary Lou McDonough, who has since retired. “I think she listened to the facts and responded to the facts.”
In a ruling on May 21, 2020, Xinis ordered the jail to submit plans to ensure proper testing, improve health care and properly protect medically vulnerable inmates. And she noted actions taken by McDonough and her staff.
“Plaintiffs have convinced the Court that temporary injunctive relief, narrowly drawn, is proper,” Xinis wrote. “Likewise, Defendant appears willing and able to implement such relief, and the Court is encouraged that critical measures are underway to protect the health and safety of the Facility’s detainees.”
McDonough recalled Xinis being an advocate for inmates.
“But that was fine,” McDonough said. “If anyone needs an advocate, it’s jail inmates. I always saw ourselves as advocates for them, too.”
The lawsuit was settled in 2021. When news broke about the Abrego Garcia case, and McDonough noticed that Xinis was handling it, she recalled telling her husband: “Oh, that’s the judge we had.”
McDonough also thought Xinis would be able to cut through whatever challenges and difficulties there were to make fair rulings. “I certainly feel like she can handle it,” she said.
What comes next?
Xinis has signaled she will keep the Trump administration on a tight leash in trying to get Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.
In a written response to the Trump administration’s assertion that they needed more time to respond to a Supreme Court order handed down Thursday evening, Xinis on Friday wrote, “The Defendants’ suggestion that they need time to meaningfully review a four-page Order … blinks at reality.”
Later in the day she spelled out what the government’s daily report to her should contain:
“(1) The current physical location and custodial status of Abrego Garcia; (2) what steps, if any, Defendants have taken to facilitate his immediate return to the United States; (3) what additional steps Defendants will take, and when, to facilitate his return.”
Xinis also ordered parties in the case back to court at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
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