The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has shot down the Justice Department’s attempt to block orders requiring the Trump administration to help wrongfully deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia return to the United States. In a blistering rebuke, the judge warned that the courts would hold the government accountable, and any effort to defy their authority would not be tolerated.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee, sharply criticized the Trump administration in his ruling. He emphasized that the government would not “micromanage” the orders from Judge Paula Xinis, who had demanded daily updates on the administration’s progress in securing Garcia’s return.
Wilkinson pointed out that the government’s actions were dangerous and out of step with American values.
“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” Wilkinson wrote. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
The judge also made it clear that the Trump administration could not simply ignore the Supreme Court’s decision on this case. The high court had already ruled that the government must facilitate Garcia’s return. Wilkinson declared that this ruling didn’t mean the administration could do nothing.
“The Supreme Court’s decision does not, however, allow the government to do essentially nothing,” he wrote. “It 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. ‘Facilitate’ is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear.”
In his closing remarks, Wilkinson issued a stark warning to the Trump administration, warning that by refusing to comply with court orders, the government was hurting its own credibility.
“The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions,” Wilkinson wrote. “The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.”
