The United States Supreme Court has issued a stay on an order requiring that the government return an El Salvadoran man who was deported and sent to a prison in his native country.
In a miscellaneous order issued Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts stayed an order from the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland regarding the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Additionally, Roberts requested a response from plaintiffs by Tuesday night, to which lawyers for Garcia responded soon after the miscellaneous order was issued.
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“This case is one of one,” his lawyers told the court, according to Fox News. “It presents the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ of the Government conceding that it erred in removing Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia ‘to a foreign country for which he was not eligible for removal.'”
“Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime, in any country. He is not wanted by the Government of El Salvador,” his lawyers further argued. “He sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafka-esque mistake.”
An El Salvadoran native who unlawfully entered the U.S. during the Obama administration and resided in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Abrego Garcia was deported last month under the allegation that he’s an MS-13 gang member.
Abrego Garcia filed a lawsuit against several federal officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons, alleging that he was deprived of due process.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers also argued that in 2019, a judge had granted him federal protection from being deported.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed at a press briefing earlier this month that Abrego Garcia as had violated the United States’ immigration laws and “is a leader in the brutal MS-13 gang, and he is involved in human trafficking.”
However, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis rejected the claim that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, demanding in her order that he be returned to the U.S. She wrote in her opinion that “the ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York—a place he has never lived.”
However, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation that “intelligence reports” substantiate the government’s belief that Abrego Garcia “is involved in human trafficking.”
“Whether he is in El Salvador or a detention facility in the U.S., he should be locked up,” McLaughlin continued.
U.S. Solicitor General Dean John Sauer filed a request to vacate the lower court ruling, reiterating the claim that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member, but also saying that “removing him to El Salvador” was “an administrative error.”
Sauer argued that “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.”
“The Constitution vests the President with control over foreign negotiations so that the United States speaks with one voice, not so that the President’s central Article II prerogatives can give way to district-court diplomacy,” Sauer argued.
“If this precedent stands, other district courts could order the United States to successfully negotiate the return of other removed aliens anywhere in the world by close of business. Under that logic, district courts would effectively have extraterritorial jurisdiction over the United States’ diplomatic relations with the whole world.”
