Two top lawyers with the Justice Department’s immigration litigation office have been removed from their positions one day after a federal judge ruled the Trump administration must return a Maryland man it mistakenly deported to a Salvadoran prison.
August Flentje and Erez Reuveni, the acting director and acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation, were placed on leave Saturday, people familiar with the situation told Bloomberg Law.
“At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States. Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a Saturday statement, in response to an inquiry about the removals.
Flentje has worked at the Justice Department for nearly three decades, while Reuveni has served there roughly 15 years, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Neither responded to requests sent to their DOJ emails on Saturday.
The attorneys are the latest longtime career attorneys to be removed or pushed out of the Justice Department during the Trump administration, actions that have fueled concerns about politicization at the agency. In February, Bondi issued a memo stating that Justice Department lawyers “are expected to zealously advance, protect, and defend their client’s interests,” and anyone who falls short “will be subject to discipline and potentially termination.”
The career leader of the immigration litigation office’s appellate section, a 30-year veteran of the department, resigned in February rather than accept a reassignment to the administration’s working group to crack down on sanctuary jurisdictions.
Reuveni had been representing the Justice Department in Maryland federal court litigation challenging the government’s removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man with a US citizen wife and children, to a Salvadoran prison on a flight for alleged gang members.
Abrego Garcia had already been granted a form of protection in immigration court known as “withholding of removal,” which legally prevented the government from sending him back to El Salvador. The Justice Department said in court filings that he was deported there “because of an administrative error.”
During a Friday court hearing, Reuveni told Judge Paula Xinis that “we have nothing to say on the merits” and that “we concede he should not have been removed to El Salvador,” according to court filings.
When she asked him why the US couldn’t bring him back, Reuveni replied, “Your Honor, I will say, for the Court’s awareness, that when this case landed on my desk, the first thing I did was ask my clients that very question. I’ve not received, to date, an answer that I find satisfactory,” court filings said.
That day, Xinis found the challengers were likely to win their case and gave the federal government until the end of the day on Monday to bring Abrego Garcia back to the US, following a hearing that afternoon.
The Justice Department requested a pause on her order the next day. That Saturday stay motion is signed by Flentje, but not by Reuveni, who’d argued in court the day prior.
In a longer opinion Xinis released Sunday morning, Xinis reasoned that the government “produced no evidence” that it couldn’t arrange for Abrego Garcia’s return, given that it transported him to the prison and paid the Salvadoran government to keep him in custody.
The administration is also facing separate litigation in a Washington federal trial over its use of an 18th century wartime statute to send hundreds of alleged gang members to the Salvadoran prison without hearings.
Reuveni’s removal was first reported by the New York Times.
The case is Armando v. Noem, D. Md., No. 8:25-cv-00951, 4/6/25.
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