Justice’s direct government to facilitate the return of Maryland man who is mistakenly deported to El Salvador

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The Supreme Court on Thursday night largely left in place an order by a federal judge in Maryland, who requires the government to return to the United States, a man in Maryland, currently being held in a prison in maximum security in El Salvador as a result of what the Trump administration admits was a “administrative mistake.” In an unsigned opinion without registered, the dissenter rejected the Trump Administration’s request to block the decision of US district judge Paula Xinis, who had temporarily paused John Roberts on Monday afternoon to give the judges time to consider the government’s request.

The judges agreed that Xinis could demand that the Trump administration “ease the ABREGO Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been if he had not been unclear to” that country. But the judges sent the case back to the lower right for Xinis to “clarify” her extra instruction that Trump administration “affects” his return.

By making this clarification, the judges wrote, Xinis must take a list of “The respect caused by the executive branch in the exercise of foreign affairs.” On the other hand, they added that the Trump administration “should be prepared to share what it can about the steps it has taken” to secure the return of Abrego Garcia “and the view of further steps.”

The man in the center of the case is 29-year-old Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was born in El Salvador and came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant as a teenager to escape gang violence in his homeland. Since 2019, he has lived outside Washington, DC, with his wife – an American citizen – and their three children, all of whom are also American citizens.

In 2019, immigration officials began efforts to deport ABEGO Garcia. When he tried to be released from custody with a bond, the government claimed he was a member of MS-13, an international criminal gang.

An immigration judge rejected Abrego Garcia’s request for release and found that “the proof shows that he is a verified member of MS-13.” Although the judge acknowledged that she was “reluctant to provide proof of Abrego Garcia’s” clothing as an indication of gang -affiliation, “she concluded that it was enough that a” past, proven and reliable information source “had verified Abrego Garcia’s” gang -membership, gang -rang and gang name. “The Immigration Committee confirmed that decision.

Several months later, AbreGo Garcia was eventually awarded to detention of removal – a form of immigration relief that protects him from being deported to El Salvador. In particular, an immigration judge concluded, Abrego Garcia had shown that Bende members of El Salvador continue to “threaten and harass” his family, and the authorities of this country “were and would not be able or unwilling to protect him from earlier or feared future persecution.”

On March 12, 2025, Is Officers ABEGO Garcia took care of custody. He was sent to Texas and then on March 24 to El Salvador’s infamous terrorism -Insection Center. Prisoners who arrive there from the United States are stripped, tied and get their heads shaved. Neither Abrego Garcia’s wife nor his lawyers have been talking to him since then.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers brought a lawsuit in the federal court in Maryland and asked Xinis to instruct Trump administration officials to “take all steps that are reasonably available to them, proportionate to the seriousness of the ongoing damage, to return plaintiff ABEGO Garcia to the United States.”
Xinis ordered the federal government to return ABEGO Garcia at 1 p.m. 23.59 Monday, April 7th. She emphasized the government, “had no legal authority to arrest him, no reason for detaining him and no reason to send him to El Salvador – let us alone give him one of the most dangerous awards in the western hemisphere.”

Both Xinis and the US Appeals Court for the 4th Circuit refused to pause the return order while the government appealed. In a simultaneous opinion that Judge Robert King has been taking together, Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote that the federal government “has no legal authority to catch a person who is legally present in the United States away from the street and remove him from the country without a proper process. The government’s claim otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene,” she concluded.

President Donald Trump’s new lawyer, D. John Sauer, came to the Supreme Court Monday Morning without even waiting for the 4th circuit to act on his request to pause the return order. He claimed that Xinis had “ordered an unprecedented relief: dictated to the United States that it must not only negotiate with a foreign country to return an enemy who is a foreigner on foreign land, but also succeed at 23:59.”

Sauer repeated the Trump administration’s complaints about what he characterized as “a river of illegal injunctions” of federal judges around the country. But even compared to these orders, he argued, Xinis’ order is “remarkable.” And he asked the judges to impose an administrative stay – that is, a temporary freezer of Xinis’ order to give the court time to consider Trump administration’s request.

Shortly before 7 p.m. 16 Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts awarded the administrative stay, and he instructed Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to submit their answers at 1 p.m. 17 Tuesday.

However, just a few minutes later, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers submitted their answers. They called on the judges to deny the Trump administration’s request and order the government to “facilitate Abrego Garcia’s immediate return to stop the ongoing irreparable injury he suffers, and promotes public interest in the right justice administration.”

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers emphasized that their client “has never been indicted for a crime, in any country. He is not in demand by the government of El Salvador. He sits in a foreign prison solely in the United States as a product of a Kafka-Esque error.” Furthermore, they added that there is no “novel” about demanding that the federal government facilitate his return.

Xinis neglected the government’s claim that ABEGO Garcia is a member of MS-13. She emphasized that “” the evidence “against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing but his Chicago Bulls-Hat and Hoodie, and a vague, uncorporated claim from a confidential informant who claimed he belonged to the MS-13’s ‘Western’ Clique in New York, he has never lived.”

In a two-page statement released shortly after 7 p.m. 6.30pm on Thursday evening, the court noted that as a result of the administrative stay awarded by Roberts on Monday, the Monday deadline for Abrego Garcia’s return “now gone”, so part of the government’s application “effectively is awarded.” But the court explained, the rest of Xinis’s order “remains in force but requires clarification on the custody.” Specifically, the court continued, it is not clear what it means for the government to “implement” the return of Abrego Garcia, and Xinis may not have the power to order the government to do so.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a statement on the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday, which became with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She stated that she would have rejected the government’s request “fully.” But she nevertheless agreed with her colleagues that “the right remedy is to give Abrego Garcia with all the process he would have been entitled to if he was now illegally removed to El Salvador.” This includes she emphasized, “message and an opportunity to be heard” in future procedure, international conventions prohibiting torture and federal laws that regulate the detention and removal of non -citizens. Furthermore, in other forms of immigration case, she added to the federal government has a “well-established policy” of facilitating a non-citizen’s return to the United States.

“In the case of custody,” she concluded, Xinis “should continue to ensure that the government lives up to its obligations to follow the law.”