Supreme Court: Trump officials must ‘facilitate’ return of wrongly deported man... NO DISSENTS !!!

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 Kilmar Abrego García to be brought 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.”

The Supreme Court’s unsigned order does not mean Abrego García will be returned immediately. The justices sent the case back to the lower-court judge to clarify aspects of her initial order and said the Trump administration should be prepared to “share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”

There were no noted dissents.

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.

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 U.S. District Judge Paula 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.

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.”

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.

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 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.”