Trump asks US Supreme Court to pause order to return man deported to El Salvador in error

President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily halt a judge's order requiring his administration to return by the end of the day a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was erroneously deported to El Salvador.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis on Friday ordered the administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the end of Monday, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family. A lower federal appeals court - the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - declined on Monday to freeze the judge's order.

Xinis had 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.

The Justice Department in a 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.

The White House and administration officials have accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which Trump's administration has designated 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 had found that the 2019 order prohibiting Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador was still in place. Xinis said in her written decision issued on Sunday that "there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal." The judge called the removal of Abrego Garcia "wholly lawless."

In their Supreme Court filing, Justice Department lawyers said that while Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador was "an administrative error," that did not give the judge the authority "to seize control over foreign relations, treat the Executive Branch as a subordinate diplomat, and demand that the United States let a member of a foreign terrorist organization into America tonight."

The administration's 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 was in removing him specifically to El Salvador because of the deportation protection order he received 2019, it said.

Department lawyers said that Abrego Garcia, as an alleged member of MS-13, is no longer eligible for that protection.

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." REUTERS