Justices Say U.S. Must Try To Bring Back Man Mistakenly Deported

The Supreme Court said the Trump administration must try to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to prison in El Salvador, rejecting the Trump administration’s emergency appeal. The court acted in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered Abrego Garcia, being held in a notorious Salvadoran prison, returned to the U.S. by midnight Monday. “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 it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the court said in an order with no dissents, reports the Associated Press.

It comes after a string of rulings in which the conservative majority has at least partially sided with Trump amid a wave of lower court orders slowing the president’s agenda. In Thursday’s case, Chief Justice John Roberts had already pushed back Xinis’ deadline. The court said the Trump administration should be prepared to share what steps it has taken to try to get him back and what more it could do. The administration claims Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, though he has never been charged with or convicted of a crime. His attorneys said there is no evidence he was in MS-13. The administration conceded that it made a mistake in sending him to El Salvador, but argued that it no longer could do anything about it. The court’s liberal justices said the administration should have hastened to correct “its egregious error” and was “plainly wrong” to suggest it could not bring him home.