Supreme Court pauses return of mistakenly deported Maryland man, for now 

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily froze a midnight deadline for returning a Maryland man to the U.S after he was mistakenly sent to a notorious El Salvador prison.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was swept up in deportation flights last month and sent to a terrorism center in El Salvador despite a judge’s order finding he would be persecuted by local gangs in his home country.

The Trump administration had fought a midnight deadline from a Maryland judge who ordered Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S. At the Supreme Court on Monday, the administration argued that Barack Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had no authority to make such demands.

“While the United States concedes that removal to El Salvador was an administrative error, that does not 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 tonight,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote.

Ordering Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S. on Monday night is unprecedented and indefensible, the government argued, stating that it can’t conduct foreign diplomacy under a judicially mandated clock.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, issued an administrative stay Monday afternoon freeing the administration from the impending deadline to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. until the justices rule on Trump’s emergency appeal.

Roberts called for a response from Abrego Garcia’s attorneys by 5 p.m. Tuesday, but their response was submitted only minutes after the temporary stay was issued.

The only one harmed by the current state of affairs is Abrego Garcia, his attorneys told the Supreme Court. The government can and has previously returned wrongfully removed migrants and has never claimed it was powerless to correct its error before today, they said.

They refuted the Trump administration’s push to frame him as a dangerous gang member.

“Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime, in any country,” his attorneys wrote. “He is not wanted by the government of El Salvador. He sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafka-esque mistake.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Stephenie Thacker, an Obama appointee, condemned the government’s unwillingness to return Abrego Garcia on Monday morning when a Fourth Circuit panel refused to block Xinis’ order.

“The United States government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process,” Thacker wrote. “The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.”

The Trump administration**** asked the justices to issue an emergency pause on Xinis’ order, claiming that the harm caused by interfering in executive branch affairs outweighed the interests of the order.

“While ‘there is a public interest in preventing aliens from being wrongfully removed,’ that interest is substantially diminished in this case and outweighed by the harm that the district court’s injunction threatens to cause the government and the public,” Sauer wrote.

On Friday, Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni asked Xinis for additional time to broker Abrego Garcia’s return before the court intervened. Reuveni said he couldn’t tell the judge what authority Abrego Garcia was arrested upon, why he was sent to the prison in El Salvador or why the U.S couldn’t get him back.

“I’m also frustrated that I have no answers for you for a lot of these questions,” Reuveni told the judge.

Over the weekend, reports emerged that Reuveni was put on leave. Attorney General Pam Bondi later said that Justice Department attorneys are required to “zealously advocate on the behalf of the United States.”

“Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences,” Bondi said in a statement.

Abrego Garcia had a permit from the Department of Homeland Security to legally work in the U.S., according to his attorney. Before his arrest and removal, Abrego Garcia was working as a sheet metal apprentice in Maryland, where he lived with his wife, a U.S. citizen, and their three children.

After a U.S. immigration judge protected Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador in 2019, he was released. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not try to deport him to another country — until last month.

In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared MS-13 a foreign terrorist organization. MS-13 members, the government said, were expeditiously removed from the country as a consequence. The Trump administration claimed that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys dispute this finding, noting that a confidential informant said he was a member of the gang’s New York chapter despite him having never lived in the state.

The Justice Department said it would be impossible to return Abrego Garcia by midnight Monday.

“The Government of El Salvador has custody of Abrego Garcia, so he cannot be returned to the United States unless the Government of El Salvador releases him,” Sauer wrote. “Compliance with the district court’s order thus requires the Government of El Salvador to ‘release Plaintiff Abrego Garcia from its prison.’”

The Trump administration pushed the Supreme Court to block Xinis’ order and send a message to other judges who might similarly challenge the administration.

“​​If this precedent stands, other district courts could order the United States to successfully negotiate the return of other removed aliens anywhere in the world by close of business,” Sauer wrote. “Under that logic, district courts would effectively have extraterritorial jurisdiction over the United States’ diplomatic relations with the whole world.”

The Justice Department claimed that federal judges were upsetting the separation of powers by interfering with the executive branch’s authority over foreign affairs. The government added it would be offensive for U.S. judges to issue orders to the government of El Salvador, where they have no authority.

“The idea that district judges are best positioned to decide how long delicate foreign negotiations should take — and can grossly interfere with those negotiations by signaling to foreign partners that they can leverage the United States’ obligation to comply with court orders into concessions to beat the district judge’s clock — is antithetical to the constitutional order,” Sauer wrote.

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