In a legal twist worthy of a Kafka novel, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in Monday to temporarily block a judge’s demand that the government retrieve Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Salvadoran man deported in error—by midnight.
The emergency halt, issued by Chief Justice John Roberts, buys time for the Court to weigh whether to freeze a lower court’s explosive ruling that called the deportation “wholly lawless.”
Abrego Garcia had lived in Maryland with a legal work permit and a protection order shielding him from deportation to El Salvador, a country where an immigration judge ruled he’d face gang persecution. That order, still legally binding, was ignored when he was swept up by immigration agents and put on a plane on March 15—one of over 200 deportees on a flight that also included alleged gang members.
The U.S. government admits it removed him to El Salvador by “administrative error,” but now insists his deportation itself wasn’t a mistake—only the destination was. Their claim? That he’s affiliated with MS-13, the gang designated a terrorist group by the Trump administration. No charges have ever been filed against him in any country. His legal team calls the allegation baseless.
“There is no evidence supporting the claim that he cannot be brought back,” his attorneys told the Supreme Court, painting a bleak picture: Abrego, a man with no criminal record, a U.S. citizen child, and a marriage to an American woman, now sits in what they describe as “one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere,” held solely at the request of the United States.
The judge who ordered his return, Paula Xinis, didn’t mince words in her ruling: The government had “no legal grounds whatsoever” for detaining or deporting him. Her decision ignited tensions at the highest levels of the Justice Department, which argues that courts can’t force results from sensitive international negotiations on a tight deadline.
“The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador,” DOJ attorneys argued. “We cannot guarantee the outcome of diplomatic talks, especially with an arbitrary clock ticking.”
Meanwhile, the ripple effects inside the DOJ have been swift. Two senior officials—Erez Reuveni and his supervisor Auggie Flentje—were placed on leave after representing the administration’s position in court. Flentje, a 20-year veteran who previously defended Trump-era legal battles like the Muslim travel ban, has become the latest casualty in a string of internal shake-ups in the Office of Immigration Litigation.
As Abrego Garcia waits in a foreign prison under a $6 million U.S.-El Salvador detention agreement, another federal judge is now investigating whether others deported on that same March flight were also removed in defiance of court orders.
For now, Abrego’s fate hangs in legal limbo, suspended between courtrooms, borders, and bureaucratic missteps—while his family waits, thousands of miles away, for justice to catch up.
