Chief Justice Roberts pauses deadline for return of Maryland man
mistakenly deported to El Salvador
[April 08, 2025]
By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts agreed Monday to pause a
midnight deadline for the Trump administration to return a Maryland man
mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The temporary order comes hours after a Justice Department emergency
appeal to the Supreme Court arguing U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis
overstepped her authority when she ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned
to the United States.
The administration has conceded that Abrego Garcia should not have been
sent to El Salvador because an immigration judge found he likely would
face persecution by local gangs.
But he is no longer in U.S. custody and the government has no way to get
him back, the administration argued.
Xinis gave the administration until just 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 in “a deluge of
unlawful injunctions” judges have issued to slow President Donald
Trump's agenda.
The Justice Department appeal was directed to Roberts because he handles
appeals from Maryland.
The Trump administration is separately asking the Supreme Court to allow
Trump to resume deportations of Venezuelan migrants accused of being
gang members to the same Salvadoran prison under an 18th century wartime
law.
The 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.
The White House has described Abrego Garcia’s deportation as an
“administrative error” but has also cast him an MS-13 gang member.
Attorneys for Abrego Garcia said there is no evidence he was in MS-13.
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Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland,
who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news
conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., April
4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, file)
“The Executive branch may not seize individuals from the streets,
deposit them in foreign prisons in violation of court orders, and
then invoke the separation of powers to insulate its unlawful
actions from judicial scrutiny,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers wrote in a
response filed moments after Roberts issued his temporary pause.
Xinis wrote that the decision to arrest him and send him to El
Salvador appears to be “wholly lawless,” explaining that little to
no evidence supports a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that
Abrego Garcia was once an MS-13 member.
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national who has never been
charged or convicted of any crime, was detained by immigration
agents and deported last month.
He had a permit from DHS to legally work in the U.S. and was a sheet
metal apprentice pursuing a journeyman license, his attorney said.
His wife is a U.S. citizen.
In 2019, an immigration judge barred the U.S. from deporting Abrego
Garcia to El Salvador.
A Justice Department lawyer conceded in 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 placed him
on leave.
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