The Supreme Court unanimously defied President Donald Trump in a ruling Thursday, ordering that his administration must take steps to bring back a Maryland man it mistakenly deported to—and had imprisoned in—El Salvador.
In its decision, however, the high court seemed to suggest that the judiciary branch may not wield the power to compel the Trump administration to bring the man back—leaving the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in jeopardy.
Instead, it simply agreed with a lower court’s decision that federal authorities “facilitate and effectuate the return” of Garcia, who is currently being held in El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), known in English as the Terrorism Confinement Center.
“The order properly 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,” the Supreme Court’s ruling said.
“The district court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs,” the Supreme Court’s ruling said. “For its part, the government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”
In a statement accompanying the unsigned ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected the administration’s argument that it couldn’t be held accountable for Garcia because he was no longer in the country as “plainly wrong.”
“The only argument the Government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong,” Sotomayor writes. “The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene... That view refutes itself.”
The case is not yet over. It now heads to trial court, and it remains unclear if Garcia will be returned to the United States.
Thursday’s ruling, which included a statement from Sotomayor that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, had no noted dissents.
In her statement, Sotomayor also pleaded with Paula Xinis of the Federal District Court in Maryland—the trial judge—to “continue to ensure that the government lives up to its obligations to follow the law.”
Andrew J. Rossman, a lawyer for Garcia, told The New York Times, “The rule of law won today. Time to bring him home.”
Despite the Trump administration admitting Garcia’s deportation and imprisonment was an “administrative error,” it refused to correct the mistake, and several officials bent over backwards in public trying to justify it.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that Garcia was a “leader” of the MS-13 gang, yet didn’t provide any evidence to support that assertion.
Vice President J.D. Vance, meanwhile, called Garcia “convicted,” but failed to note any charges against him—let alone convictions.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi punished the Justice Department lawyer who admitted the erroneous deportation in court by placing him on indefinite paid leave.
Garcia has been incarcerated in El Salvador’s CECOT terrorism center along with dozens of other deportees as part of the U.S. government’s $6 million deal with the central American country. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently visited the notorious prison as part of an effort to convince undocumented immigrants to self-deport.
Garcia, who did not go before an immigration judge in the U.S., has been locked up for nearly a month.
Yet at no point in that time, Sotomayor writes, has the Trump administration cited any “basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it.”
