The Deportation Standoff Sending the U.S. Toward a Constitutional Crisis

El Salvador’s president ruled out returning to the United States Kilmar Abrego García, a mistakenly deported Maryland man whose case is at the center of a legal battle over the Trump administration’s mass-deportation campaign.

Abrego García was among hundreds of immigrants sent to El Salvador last month, despite a 2019 court order protecting him from deportation. Though the Trump administration has admitted his deportation was an “administrative error,” officials said they do not have the authority to secure his return. Abrego García’s lawyers said he “sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafkaesque mistake.” {snip}

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Abrego García is a Salvadoran citizen who entered the United States illegally at age 16, and is now married to a U.S. citizen. The father of three and sheet metal apprentice had been in the United States for nearly 14 years.

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In 2019, an immigration judge granted him a form of relief called withholding of removal, which prohibits deportation to El Salvador unless the order is terminated, according to 2019 court documents. To obtain this order, a “noncitizen must prove that he is more likely than not to suffer persecution” if returned to his country of origin, the documents stated.

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Abrego García was detained in 2019 alongside three other young men who were soliciting employment outside a Home Depot. Officers with the Prince George’s County Police Department repeatedly asked Abrego García whether he was a gang member, which he denied. He was taken into ICE custody, with agents arguing that local police had “verified” that he was an active member of MS-13 with the “Western” clique in New York based on his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie and the words of a confidential informant.

The details from the informant, which officials have not disclosed, did not result in Abrego García being charged with a crime or otherwise implicated. “Nothing came of it,” U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis wrote.

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Last week, the Supreme Court backed a lower court in requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego García’s release — but said that Xinis’s order for the government to “effectuate” his return was “unclear” and might overstep the judiciary’s power.

Xinis then ordered the Trump administration to share updates on its efforts to facilitate Abrego García’s return and his location. The government, however, refused to meet the deadline, saying on Friday that it needed more time. On Saturday, an administration official confirmed that Abrego García “is alive and secure” in the Salvadoran mega-prison.

On Sunday, federal officials said the Supreme Court ruling only meant that Abrego García should be allowed to return should he be released from El Salvador — arguing that “facilitate” means to remove any obstacles in the United States that would block his entry. They also argued he “is no longer eligible” for the protection from deportation that should have prevented his removal in the first place.

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In its Sunday filing, the Justice Department argued that “the federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner” — an argument echoed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said Monday, “No court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States.”

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