A view of the US Supreme Court in Washington.
Credit: Reuters Photo
President Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily halt a judge's order requiring his administration to return by the end of the day a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was erroneously deported to El Salvador.
US District Judge Paula Xinis on Friday ordered the administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the end of Monday, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family. A lower federal appeals court - the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals - declined on Monday to freeze Xinis' order.
Xinis had found that the US government had no lawful authority to detain and deport Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in Maryland legally with a work permit, and ordered his return by 11:59 p.m. on Monday.
The Justice Department in a Supreme Court filing said the judge's order amounted to judicial overreach.
"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," department lawyers wrote.
"The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge’s bidding," they added.
Xinis said in her written decision issued on Sunday that "there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal." The judge called the removal of Abrego Garcia "wholly lawless."
The Trump administration has faced criticism in US courts and elsewhere over its stepped-up immigration enforcement. A judge in Washington, D.C., is weighing whether the administration violated a court order not to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.
The United States has said the deportation of Abrego Garcia was done in error, but added that it is powerless to compel El Salvador to return him.
The US government told the appeals court that Abrego Garcia “has no legal right or basis to be in the United States at all” and that “the public interest obviously disfavors his return, let alone a slapdash one conducted as the result of judicial fiat.”
The White House and administration officials have accused Abrego Garcia of being a criminal gang member, but there are no pending charges. His lawyers have denied the allegation.
Xinis had found that an order from an immigration judge in 2019 prohibiting Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador, his home country, was still in place.
Abrego Garcia was stopped and detained by ICE officers on March 12 and questioned about his alleged gang affiliation.
Abrego Garcia had complied fully with all directives from immigration officials, including annual check-ins, and had never been charged with or convicted of any crime, the judge wrote.
He has been detained in El Salvador at what the judge called "one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere."