Supreme Court decides man deported in error can remain in El Salvador pending further court action-OxBig News Network

The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily halted a judge’s order requiring President Donald Trump‘s administration to return by the end of the day a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador.

Chief Justice John Roberts, acting on behalf of the court, paused an order by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis that the administration return Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the end of Monday, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family challenging the legality of his deportation.

The court’s action, called an administrative stay, gives the justices additional time to consider the administration’s more formal request to block the judge’s order while litigation in the case continues.

Earlier on Monday, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the administration’s request to freeze the judge’s order.

Xinis found that the U.S. government had no lawful authority to detain and deport Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in Maryland legally with a work permit, and ordered his return by 11:59 p.m. on Monday. He was deported on March 15 on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador that also included alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The Justice Department in its Supreme Court filing stated that while Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador through “administrative error,” his actual removal from the United States “was not error.” The error, department lawyers wrote, was in removing him specifically to El Salvador despite a deportation protection order he received in 2019.

Lawyers for the Justice Department said that Abrego Garcia, as an alleged member of the criminal gang MS-13, is no longer eligible for that protection. Trump’s administration has designated MS-13 a foreign terrorist organization.

There are no pending charges against Abrego Garcia, who is married to an American citizen with whom he is raising a U.S. citizen child, in addition to his wife’s two children from a prior relationship. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have denied the allegation that he is part of a gang.

Abrego Garcia received a 2019 judgment in the United States granting him protection from deportation to El Salvador after an immigration judge determined he would face persecution from gangs in his home country if returned.

Xinis found that the 2019 order prohibiting Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was still in place. In the judge’s written decision issued on Sunday, Xinis wrote, “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention or removal.” The judge called the removal of Abrego Garcia “wholly lawless.”

The Justice Department in its Supreme Court filing said the judge’s order amounted to judicial overreach.

“The United States cannot guarantee success in sensitive international negotiations in advance, least of all when a court imposes an absurdly compressed, mandatory deadline that vastly complicates the give-and-take of foreign-relations negotiations,” department lawyers wrote.

“The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge’s bidding,” they added.

In addition to asking the Supreme Court to intervene, the Department of Justice placed on leave Erez Reuveni, the acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation who argued the case, and his supervisor, August “Auggie” Flentje.

The decision to suspend Flentje, a 20-year department veteran, has shocked Justice Department career staff.

During the first Trump administration, he often agreed to take on cases that made other department attorneys uncomfortable. He defended Trump’s travel ban targeting people from seven Muslim majority countries on live television, and he also signed a legal brief saying that Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act was entirely unconstitutional.

Flentje and Reuveni are the latest two department employees from the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation to be sidelined. Previously, Trump officials tried to reassign its leader David McConnell, prompting McConnell to leave the department.

The Trump administration on March 15 deported more than 200 people to El Salvador, where they are being detained in the country’s massive anti-terrorism prison under a deal in which the United States is paying President Nayib Bukele’s government $6 million.

The Trump administration has faced criticism in U.S. courts and elsewhere over its stepped-up immigration enforcement. A judge in Washington, D.C., is weighing whether the administration violated a court order not to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Abrego Garcia was stopped and detained by ICE officers on March 12 and questioned about his alleged gang affiliation.

Abrego Garcia had complied fully with all directives from immigration officials, including annual check-ins, and had never been charged with or convicted of any crime, the judge wrote. He has been detained in El Salvador at what the judge called “one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere.”