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The Signal chat included Hegseth's wife, brother and lawyer, sources said.

ByKevin Shalvey, Alexandra Hutzler, and Ivan Pereira
Last Updated: April 20, 2025, 10:28 PM EDT

President Donald Trump continues to take sweeping executive actions in his second term, including an order this week targeting a senior official from his first administration who became one of his critics.

Focus continues on the legal battle regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant who was living in Maryland when he was wrongfully deported by the administration.

Latest headlines:

Here's how the news is developing.
Apr 14, 2025, 5:19 AM EDT

Trump says Salvadoran president 'doing a fantastic job' ahead of White House meeting

President Donald Trump is scheduled on Monday to host El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, for a bilateral meeting at the White House.

Trump early on Sunday told reporters he thought Bukele was doing a "fantastic job" and "taking care of a lot of problems that we have that we really wouldn't be able to take care of from a cost standpoint."

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media onboard Air Force One, on a flight to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S. April 13, 2025.
Nathan Howard/Reuters

As the second Trump administration has cracked down on immigration, El Salvador has accepted into its custody hundreds of alleged gang members. Many are housed in the country's Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security facility for El Salvador's most hardened criminals.

"We have some very bad people in that prison, people that should have never been allowed into our country, people that murder drug dealers, some of the worst people on Earth are in that prison and he's able to do that," Trump said on Sunday.

PHOTO: U.S. military personnel escort an alleged gang member who was deported by the U.S. to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center prison, at the El Salvador International Airport in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, April 12, 2025.
U.S. military personnel escort an alleged gang member who was deported by the U.S. along with others the U.S. alleges are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center prison, at the El Salvador International Airport in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, April 12, 2025.
Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia via Reuters

At least one man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported due to an "administrative error" and is being held at that notorious prison.

Apr 13, 2025, 7:19 PM EDT

DOJ says federal courts can't direct Trump admin to conduct foreign relations

Federal courts have no authority to direct the executive branch to conduct foreign relations or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given matter, the Department of Justice said on Sunday in response to a motion for relief by attorneys for Kilmer Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador.

This undated photo provided by CASA, an immigrant advocacy organization, in April 2025, shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
CASA via AP

"Plaintiffs' additional relief runs headlong through this constitutional limit," said attorneys for the Department of Justice in a filing. "They ask this Court to order Defendants to make demands of the El Salvadoran government, dispatch personnel onto the soil of an independent, sovereign nation and send an aircraft into the airspace of a sovereign foreign nation to extract a citizen of that nation from its custody."

The requests by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, the DOJ said, involve "interactions with a foreign sovereign -- and potential violations of that sovereignty."

"Plaintiffs invite this Court to 'exceed' its own 'authority' in the precise sort of way the Supreme Court cautioned against," DOJ added.

-ABC News' Laura Romero

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