China wrote: Sun Apr 06, 2025 8:12 pm
Judge says deportation of Maryland man to an El Salvador prison was ‘wholly lawless’
The U.S. government’s decision to arrest a Maryland man and send him to a notorious prison in El Salvador appears to be “wholly lawless,” a federal judge wrote Sunday in a legal opinion explaining why she had ordered the Trump administration to bring him back to the United States.
There is little to no evidence to support a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis wrote. And in any case, she said, an immigration judge had expressly barred the U.S. in 2019 from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, where he faced likely persecution by local gangs.
“As defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere,” Xinis wrote.
She said it was “eye-popping” that the government had argued that it could not be forced to bring Abrego Garcia back because he is no longer in U.S. custody.
“They do indeed cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person — migrant and U.S. citizen alike —to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the ‘custodian,’ and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction,” Xinis wrote. “As a practical matter, the facts say otherwise.”
The Justice Department has asked the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to pause Xinis’ ruling.
Click on the link for the full article
Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Order Requiring Return of Wrongly Deported Migrant
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Monday temporarily blocked a trial judge’s order directing the United States to return a Salvadoran migrant it had inadvertently deported.
The chief justice, acting on his own, issued an “administrative stay,” an interim measure meant to give the justices some breathing room while the full court considers the matter. He ordered the migrant’s lawyers to file their brief on Tuesday.
The order came just hours after the administration asked the court to block the trial judge’s order directing the United States to return the migrant by 11:59 p.m. on Monday.
Judge Paula Xinis of the Federal District Court in Maryland had said the administration committed a “grievous error” that “shocks the conscience” by sending the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to a notorious prison last month.
In the administration’s emergency application, D. John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general, said Judge Xinis had exceeded her authority by engaging in “district-court diplomacy,” because it would require working with the government of El Salvador to secure his release.
“If this precedent stands,” he wrote, “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,” he wrote. “Under that logic, district courts would effectively have extraterritorial jurisdiction over the United States’ diplomatic relations with the whole world.”
He said it did not matter that an immigration judge had previously prohibited Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador.
Click on the link for the full article
Yeah, it doesn't matter that the Trump administration broke the law. Who needs to follow court orders anyway?
