Translation
Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran immigrant who is married to a U.S. citizen, was deported to a mega-prison despite a court ruling forbidding his removal.
April 10, 2025 at 6:49 p.m. EDT 16 minutes ago
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego García, who was deported to El Salvador, speaks at a news conference in Hyattsville, Maryland, last week. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
By Justin Jouvenal and Ann E. Marimow
The Supreme Court on Thursday backed a lower-court order requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador last month.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered Kilmar Abrego García to be brought back to the United States by Monday night, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a brief pause hours before the deadline, allowing the justices time to weigh a government motion to block the order.
In a brief order, the court said the judge “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.”
There were no noted dissents.
The case has become a major flash point over President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have said their client is the victim of a “Kafkaesque mistake” and critics say the government’s contention that a judge has no power to order his return raises the possibility that other non-citizens could be whisked to a foreign country with little recourse.
Abrego García, a Salvadoran immigrant who is married to a U.S. citizen, was deported despite a court ruling forbidding it. His attorneys say he is at risk of harm or death in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, which holds many gang members. Abrego García fled El Salvador as a teen following threats from gang members and attempts to extort his mother.
In a separate immigration-related ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a block on the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to try to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members, but said the government must give potential deportees notice of proceedings against them and a chance to challenge them in court.
In a letter to the high court Tuesday, Abrego García’s attorney said that ruling bolsters their case even though their client was deported under a different authority.
“The Court’s unanimous insistence on due process and on the availability of judicial review to secure due process underscores that Abrego García—who was removed without reasonable notice or an opportunity to challenge his removal before it occurred, and in conceded violation of a court order prohibiting his removal to that country—must have a remedy for this constitutional violation,” the attorneys wrote.
Trump officials have alleged Abrego García is a member of the MS-13 gang based on reports from a confidential informant, but have not offered any evidence to back up their claims. Attorneys for Abrego García say he is not a gang member and has no criminal record in the United States or El Salvador.
The government has called Abrego García’s deportation an “administrative error.” But officials have argued they can do little to get him back because he is now in the custody of a foreign country — albeit through a detention deal the Trump administration negotiated with El Salvador. They also have argued that Xinis does not have authority to order the government to try to get him back.
“The Constitution charges the President, not federal district courts, with the conduct of foreign diplomacy and protecting the Nation against foreign terrorists, including by effectuating their removal,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a filing to the Supreme Court.
Trump officials suspended a veteran Justice Department lawyer last weekend after he confirmed in court that Abrego García’s deportation was an oversight and said he had trouble getting answers himself about why the sheet metal apprentice and father of three was sent overseas. In an unusual filing on Monday, the government disavowed the in court comments of Erez Reuveni saying they “did not and do not reflect the position of the United States.”
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued in a filing that the government was trying to dispute Reuveni’s comments because they were so damaging to its case.
The government also asserted for the first time that El Salvador may have its “own legal rationales for detaining members of ... foreign terrorist groups like MS-13.” Abrego Garcia’s attorneys responded that was implausible since their client had not been in his home country since he was 16 and had no criminal record there.
Xinis has slammed the government’s handling of the case as “wholly lawless.” A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit issued a withering opinion Monday unanimously upholding Xinis’s 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,” the appeals panel wrote. “The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.”
Abrego García’s attorneys turned to literature to describe his plight, writing in a Supreme Court filing that their client “sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafkaesque mistake.”
Abrego García was deported on March 15, aboard one of three flights that carried alleged Venezuelan gang members and Salvadoran deportees to El Salvador. Video of the flights posted on social media by Trump officials and others showed shackled men being forced off planes at night, bringing the case wide attention.
Days earlier, Abrego García was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Maryland while driving from his mother’s house to his home in the suburbs of D.C. His 5-year-old autistic son, who is unable to speak, was with him. Abrego García was detained and sent to Texas before federal authorities deported him.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... -salvador/
