The Supreme Court on Thursday said that the Trump administration is required to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to an El Salvador prison.
The court partly granted and partly rejected an emergency request filed by the Justice Department contesting a judge’s order that Kilmar Abrego Garcia be retrieved from a prison in El Salvador where he was sent on March 15 along with alleged Venezuelan gang members.
“The rule of law won today. Time to bring him home,” Andrew Rossman, one of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, said in an email.
The decision means the administration does not immediately have to try to return Abrego Garcia to the United States because a judge-imposed deadline has already expired but “should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps,” the unsigned decision said.
The district court judge may have exceeded her authority in saying the government had to not just “facilitate” but also “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return, the court added. The judge has to “clarify its directive, with due regard to the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs,” the court order said.
There were no dissenting votes, but the court’s three liberal justices signed onto a separate statement authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying they agreed that “the proper remedy is to provide Abrego Garcia with all the process to which he would have been entitled had he not been unlawfully removed to El Salvador.”
Read the full report on NBC News.
