MARYLAND, USA — Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has paused an order for the Trump administration to return a Maryland father mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison.
The Trump administration requested that the U.S. Supreme Court take up the case after 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador despite having deportation protection.
The emergency appeal application submitted on Monday by the administration, urges the Supreme Court to block a Maryland court order requiring the federal government to bring back Garcia by Monday at 11:59 p.m.
Around 4 p.m. Monday, roughly eight hours before the return deadline, Roberts paused the order. He argued the Maryland judge who ordered Abrego Garcia to be returned to the Unted States overstepped her authority.
The Trump administration has admitted that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly removed due to an “administrative error,” but has insisted that they cannot bring him back because he is in custody of the Salvadoran government.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) court filings called the return of Abrego Garcia “unprecedented and indefensible.”
“For good reason: 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 told the Supreme Court. “And this order sets the United States up for failure. The United States cannot guarantee success in sensitive international negotiations in advance, least of all when a court imposes an absurdly compressed, mandatory deadline that vastly complicates the give-and-take of foreign-relations negotiations.”
In the filings Sauer argues that the United States does not have control over El Salvador nor can it compel the Salvadoran government to follow the ruling issued Friday by US District Judge Paula Xinis.
WUSA9 has reached out to the press team for the President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele for comment, but have yet to receive a response.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval Moshenberg has responded to the Supreme Court saying that the government can and has previously returned wrongfully removed migrants and has never claimed it was powerless to correct its error before today.
“This is just a temporary administrative stay, we have every confidence that the Supreme Court will resolve this matter as quickly as possible,” Sandoval Moshenberg told WUSA9.
He also tells us, he’s confident this will be resolved quickly.
The court filings also accuse Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang. During Friday’s hearing in federal court, Xinis said the federal government had not provided her with evidence to prove his affiliation with the transnational gang. Attorney Lucia Curiel who represented the Maryland father of three in the case said her client was cleared of the gang allegations in 2019.
The Salvadoran national was protected from deportation after an immigration judge granted him Withholding of Removal. Under this status, Abrego Garcia could not be deported to his native country because the judge determined Salvadoran gangs were targeting him and his family.
On March 15, Abrego Garcia was deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador and placed in a notorious prison CECOT.
On Friday, DOJ lawyer Erez Reuvini admitted before Judge Xinis that the deportation of Abrego Garcia should not have happened and struggled to provide an explanation for the actions of the Trump administration.
Reuveni was placed on leave by the DOJ following the hearing in federal court.
The request to the Supreme Court came minutes before a ruling from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the DOJ’s request to stop the order to return Abrego Garcia.
“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,” wrote Judge Stephanie Thacker.