The Trump administration is arguing that a federal judge doesn’t have the authority to order the return of a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a dangerous prison in El Salvador.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled on Friday that the government must take immediate steps to bring 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. by Monday night. But government lawyers are now asking the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to pause that order.
“A judicial order that forces the Executive to engage with a foreign power in a certain way, let alone compel a certain action by a foreign sovereign, is constitutionally intolerable,” they wrote in a court filing.
The court has given Abrego Garcia’s lawyers until Sunday afternoon to respond to the government’s request.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, was mistakenly deported last month, even though an immigration judge had ruled in 2019 that he couldn’t be sent back to El Salvador due to the danger he faced from local gangs. His deportation was a mistake, which the White House called an “administrative error.” The situation has sparked outrage and concerns about the treatment of immigrants granted legal permission to stay in the U.S.
Supporters of Abrego Garcia filled the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the hearing, cheering when Judge Xinis ruled in his favor. Abrego Garcia’s wife, a U.S. citizen, was present in the courtroom.
Xinis, nominated by President Barack Obama, said there was no legal reason to keep Abrego Garcia in detention or to deport him to El Salvador, where he’s now in a prison notorious for human rights violations.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, slammed the government for not taking action to bring his client back, despite admitting the error. “Plenty of tweets. Plenty of White House press conferences. But no actual steps taken with the government of El Salvador to make it right,” he told the judge.
While the White House has painted Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 gang member, his lawyers argue there’s no evidence to support that claim. Abrego Garcia had a permit to work in the U.S., where he worked as a sheet metal apprentice and was working toward his journeyman license.
Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador in 2011 to escape threats from gangs, and a U.S. immigration judge had granted him protection from deportation in 2019.
The government, however, insists it has no authority to bring Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador. They argued that forcing them to do so would be like ordering them to end the war in Ukraine or bring back hostages from Gaza.
“It is an injunction to force a foreign sovereign to send back a foreign terrorist within three days’ time,” the government wrote. “That is no way to run a government. And it has no basis in American law.”
