By Justin Jouvenal, Ann E. Marimow · The Washington Post (c) 2025
The Supreme Court on Thursday backed a lower-court order requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the release from custody of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador last month.
A district court judge had ordered the administration to bring Kilmar Abrego García back to the United States by Monday night, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a brief pause hours before the deadline, allowing the justices time to weigh a government motion to block the order.
In its brief order Thursday evening, the high court said the judge “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.”
There were no noted dissents.
After the high court’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government “to take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible.” She also told the Trump administration to provide an update on its efforts by Friday morning. Xinis scheduled a hearing for Friday afternoon.
The case has become a major flash point over President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. Abrego García’s attorneys have said their client is the victim of a “Kafkaesque mistake,” and critics say the government’s contention that a judge has no power to order his return raises the possibility that other noncitizens could be whisked to a foreign country with little recourse.
In a separate immigration-related ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a block on the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to try to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members but said the government must give potential deportees notice of a planned removal and a chance to challenge it in court.
Abrego García, a Salvadoran immigrant who is married to a U.S. citizen, was deported on March 15 despite a court ruling forbidding it. His attorneys say he is at risk of harm or death in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, which holds many gang members. Abrego García fled El Salvador as a teen following threats from gang members and attempts to extort his mother.
In a statement Thursday, his attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said “the rule of law prevailed.”
“The Supreme Court upheld the District Judge’s order that the government has to bring Kilmar home,” he said. “Now they need to stop wasting time and get moving.”
The court’s three liberal justices criticized the Trump administration for suggesting that it could leave Abrego García in a Salvadoran prison for “no reason recognized by the law.”
The government’s argument “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,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In its order, the court also directed Xinis to expand on her initial order to the extent she required the Trump administration to “effectuate” Abrego García’s return and said she may have exceeded her authority by infringing on the president’s powers. The courts typically defer to the executive branch in conducting policy overseas.
“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 order said.
The court seemed to nod to an opinion from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, who said in upholding Xinis’s order that she could require the government to work to return Abrego García but that demanding his release “would be an intrusion on core executive powers that goes too far.” Wilkinson, a nominee of President Ronald Reagan, was part of a three-judge panel that unanimously upheld the district court judge’s opinion.
In response to concerns that her ruling went too far, Xinis removed the word “effectuate” from her order after the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday.
The Justice Department said in a statement that the Supreme Court “correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the President to conduct foreign affairs.”
“By directly noting the deference owed to the Executive Branch, this ruling once again illustrates that activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the President’s authority to conduct foreign policy,” the statement said.
Trump officials have alleged Abrego García is a member of the MS-13 gang based on reports from a confidential informant, but they have not offered any evidence to back up their claims. Attorneys for Abrego García say he is not a gang member and has no criminal record in the United States or El Salvador.
The government has called Abrego García’s deportation an “administrative error.” But officials have argued they can do little to get him back because he is now in the custody of a foreign country – albeit through a detention deal the Trump administration negotiated with El Salvador. They also have argued that Xinis does not have authority to order the government to try to get him back.
“The Constitution charges the President, not federal district courts, with the conduct of foreign diplomacy and protecting the Nation against foreign terrorists, including by effectuating their removal,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a filing to the Supreme Court.
Trump officials suspended a veteran Justice Department lawyer last weekend after he confirmed in court that Abrego García’s deportation was an oversight and said he had trouble getting answers himself about why the sheet metal apprentice and father of three was sent overseas. In an unusual filing on Monday, the government disavowed the court comments of Erez Reuveni saying they “did not and do not reflect the position of the United States.”
Abrego García’s attorneys argued in a filing that the government was trying to dispute Reuveni’s comments because they were so damaging to its case.
The government also asserted for the first time that El Salvador may have its “own legal rationales for detaining members of … foreign terrorist groups like MS-13.” Abrego García’s attorneys responded that was implausible since their client had not been in his home country since he was 16 and had no criminal record there.
In a letter to the high court Tuesday, Abrego García’s attorney said that ruling bolsters their case even though their client was deported under a different authority.
“The Court’s unanimous insistence on due process and on the availability of judicial review to secure due process underscores that Abrego García – who was removed without reasonable notice or an opportunity to challenge his removal before it occurred, and in conceded violation of a court order prohibiting his removal to that country – must have a remedy for this constitutional violation,” the attorneys wrote.
Xinis has slammed the government’s handling of the case as “wholly lawless.” A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit issued a withering opinion Monday unanimously upholding Xinis’s order.
“The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process,” the appeals panel wrote. “The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.”
Abrego García’s attorneys turned to literature to describe his plight, writing in a Supreme Court filing that their client “sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafkaesque mistake.”
Abrego García was deported on March 15, aboard one of three flights that carried alleged Venezuelan gang members and Salvadoran deportees to El Salvador. Video of the flights posted on social media by Trump officials and others showed shackled men being forced off planes at night, bringing the case wide attention.
Days earlier, Abrego García was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Maryland while driving from his mother’s house to his home in the suburbs of D.C. His 5-year-old autistic son, who is unable to speak, was with him. Abrego García was detained and sent to Texas before federal authorities deported him.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Abrego García’s wife, said in a statement that she is on an “emotional rollercoaster.”
“I am anxiously waiting for Kilmar to be here in my arms, and in our home putting our children to bed, knowing this nightmare is almost at its end,” Vasquez Sura said. “I will continue fighting until my husband is home.”
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Katie Mettler and Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.