Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to pause Monday’s deadline of midnight for the Trump Administration to return a Marylander mistakenly sent to a notorious El Salvador prison.
The temporary order came hours after a Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court in an emergency, arguing that U.S. district judge Paula Xinis had overstepped her powers when she ordered Kilmar Garcia to return to the United States.
Abrego Garcia should never have been sent to El Salvador, the administration conceded. An immigration judge had determined that he would likely be persecuted by local gangs. The White House and administration have maintained that he is still a member of a gang.
The administration claimed that he was no longer in U.S. custody and that the government had no way of bringing him back.
Xinis gave his administration just before midnight to “facilitate” and “effectuate” Abrego Garca’s return.
“The district court’s injunction — which requires Abrego Garcia’s release from the custody of a foreign sovereign and return to the United States by midnight on Monday — is patently unlawful,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in court papers, casting the order as one in “a deluge of unlawful injunctions” judges have issued to slow President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Roberts, who handles appeals in Maryland, was the person to whom Roberts’s appeal was addressed by the Justice Department.
Separately, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court for permission to resume the deportation of Venezuelan migrants who are accused of being members of gangs to the same Salvadoran jail under a wartime law from the 18th century.
The Federal appeals Court in Richmond, Virginia denied the request of the administration for a stay. In a short opinion that accompanied the unanimous decision, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson stated: “There’s no doubt the government screwed this up.”
White House described Abrego’s Garcia deportation as “administrative mistake” but also branded him a member of the MS-13 gang. Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary, said that Abrego Garca was “definitely” a member of a gang and “a very dangerous individual.”
“It wasn’t about his past and whether he was dangerous or if he shouldn’t be in the United States; it was about where should he move?” she added.
The lawyers for Abrego Garcia wrote that the Executive Branch cannot seize people from the street, place them in foreign jails against court orders and then use the separation of powers as a shield to protect its illegal actions from judicial review. This was written in response to Roberts’ temporary pause.
Xinis wrote in a letter that the decision to send Abrego Garcia to El Salvador and arrest him appears “wholly unlawful.” He explained that there is little evidence to support a vague, uncorroborated allegation that Abrego was formerly an MS-13.
Abrego Garca, a 29-year-old Salvadoran who has not been charged with any crime or convicted, was arrested by immigration agents last month and deported.
His attorney stated that he had a DHS permit to work legally in the U.S. He was also a sheet-metal apprentice who was working towards a journeyman’s license. His wife is an American citizen.
A federal immigration judge in 2019 barred the U.S. government from relocating Abrego Garcia back to El Salvador.
In a court appearance, a Justice Department lawyer admitted that Abrego Garca should not have been deported. Erez Reuveni was later removed from the case by Attorney General Pam Bondi and put on leave.
