Chief Justice John Roberts agreed Monday to postpone the Trump administration’s midnight deadline for returning a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
In an emergency appeal to the justices, the Justice Department argued that when U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, she exceeded her authority.
The administration has admitted that Abrego Garcia should not have been sent to El Salvador because an immigration judge determined that he was likely to face persecution from local gangs.
However, he is no longer in US custody, and the government has no way of reuniting with him, according to the administration.
Xinis gave the administration until shortly before midnight to “facilitate and effectuate” Abrego Garcia’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 of “a deluge of unlawful injunctions” issued by judges to slow President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The Trump administration is also asking the Supreme Court to allow it to resume deporting Venezuelan migrants accused of gang membership to the same Salvadoran prison under an 18th-century wartime law.
A federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, denied the administration’s request for a stay. “There is no question that the government screwed up here,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote in a brief opinion accompanying the unanimous denial.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation was described as a “administrative error” by the White House, but he was also identified as an MS-13 gang member. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys stated that there is no evidence that he was a member of MS-13.
According to Xinis, the decision to arrest and deport Abrego Garcia to El Salvador appears to be “wholly lawless,” with little to no evidence supporting a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that he was once an MS-13 member.
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national who has never been charged or convicted of a crime, was detained by immigration authorities and deported last month.
He had a DHS permit to work legally in the United States and was a sheet metal apprentice working toward a journeyman license, according to his attorney. His wife is a United States citizen.
In 2019, an immigration judge blocked the United States from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.
A Justice Department lawyer admitted during a court hearing that Abrego Garcia should not have been deported. Attorney General Pam Bondi later removed the lawyer, Erez Reuveni, from the case and put him on leave.
