Supreme Court upholds order on Kilmar Abrego Garcia

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court order that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was forcibly and wrongly deported to El Salvador, where he is in a notorious prison.

But the Supreme Court in its decision told a Maryland federal district court judge to clarify his order last week that the administration “effectuate” the return of Abrego Garcia.

The decision also directed the Trump administration, who accuses Abrego Garcia of being a gang member, to prepare “to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps” related to his possible return.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Andrew Rossman, in an email to NBC News, wrote, “The rule of law won today.”

“Time to bring him home,” Rossman wrote.

The Trump administration had opposed the order to return the El Salvador native, who is married and has three children with special needs, even after acknowledging that he “was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal,” the Supreme Court noted in its ruling.

The Supreme Court decision is a major rebuke to the administration, which, since the return of President Donald Trump to the White House, has made the forcible deportation of purported gang members a top priority.

In ruling in another case on Monday, the Supreme Court said the administration could resume using the Alien Enemies Act to seek the deportations of alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador.

But in a victory for civil liberty advocates, the court in the same ruling said the would-be deportees must be given time to challenge their detentions by U.S. authorities and to challenge the use of the act in their cases.

Abrego Garcia was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Maryland on March 12, and deported three days later.

The Justice Department said his removal was due to an “administrative error.”

But Justice Department lawyers also said Abrego Garcia was found to be a member of the notorious gang MS-13, which the United States has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

His lawyers, however, deny that he is a member of that gang. They also said he has lived in the U.S. for a decade without ever being charged with a crime.

The Supreme Court in its unsigned ruling Thursday, said, “The [district court] 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.”

“The intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’ in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority,” the Supreme Court ruling said. “The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

In a statement attached to the order, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was joined by fellow justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote, “To this day, the Government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his con- confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it.”

“The Government remains bound by an Immigration Judge’s 2019 order expressly prohibiting Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador because he faced a ‘clear probability of future persecution’ there and “demonstrated that [El Salvador’s] authorities were and would be unable or unwilling to protect him.” Sotomayor wrote. “Instead of hastening to correct its egregious error, the
Government dismissed it as an ‘oversight.’ “

Sotomayor wrote that the government’s only argument is that U.S. courts cannot grant relief to a deportee crosses the border.

That “is plainly wrong,” she said.

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