In an unsigned order, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously upheld most of a lower court decision ordering the White House to bring about the return of a wrongly deported man sent to an El Salvador mega-prison.
Maryland man Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an alleged MS-13 gang member, was deported on March 15, during a mass deportation operation that targeted nearly 240 suspected members of Latin American gangs.
U.S. Federal District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration last week to return Abrego Garcia saying the deportation was a violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, also citing a lack of due process. In 2019, Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, was granted legal protection from deportation to protect him from potential gang violence he might face if he returned to his home country, which Xinis pointed out in her filing.
However, the Trump administration has argued that even though he was granted withholding of removal, meaning he was legally protected from being deported back to his home country of El Salvador, the U.S. can deport him anywhere else in the world.
On Monday, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. put an administrative stay on Xinis order, which the Supreme Court acknowledges in its latest filing.
Part “of the District Court’s order remains in effect but requires clarification on remand. The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
In their previous filing to the Supreme Court requesting the block of Xinis’s order, D. John Sauer, U.S. solicitor general, representing the Department of Homeland Security, admitted that though Abrego Garcia was improperly removed, it doesn’t “license district courts to seize control over foreign relations, treat the Executive Branch as a subordinate diplomat, and demand that the United States let a member of a foreign terrorist organization into America.”
The Supreme Court agreed, ordering the district courts to clarify their decisions moving forward “with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
U.S. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a separate statement following the unanimous ruling that she agreed with the court’s order “that the proper remedy is to provide Abrego Garcia with all the process to which he would have been entitled had he not been unlawfully removed to El Salvador. That means the Government must comply with its obligation to provide Abrego Garcia with ‘due process of law,’ including notice and an opportunity to be heard, in any future proceedings.”
She also noted that it would be wrong to “leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law.”
Will Abrego Garcia be returned?
The Supreme Court did not give the Trump administration a deadline for Abrego Garcia’s return.
One of his attorneys, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, was pleased with the order, but added: “Now they need to stop wasting time and get moving,” per CNN. “The Supreme Court upheld the District Judge’s order that the government has to bring Kilmar home.”
Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, also told CNN that the order doesn’t necessarily force President Donald Trump to act.
“The Supreme Court’s opinion today gives the administration cover to ‘try’ to bring him home but does not require the federal government — the executive branch — to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia home,” she said. “It’s a decision that doesn’t protect Mr. Abrego Garcia to the fullest extent that the law should.”
Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham the Trump administration had every right to deport Abrego Garcia, “they just couldn’t deport him to El Salvador evidently.”
“As all these cases make their way through, the president’s well within his authority to do it,” Schmitt said. “In this specific example that just happened here, he’s going to get deported, and he should. It just will be somewhere else other than El Salvador.”