A Supreme Court decision pushing for the return of a man mistakenly deported to a Salvadoran prison has both his lawyers and the Trump administration claiming victory, leaving unclear if and when Kilmar Abrego Garcia will return home.
It’s the latest instance of the high court splitting the baby as Trump’s sweeping agenda swarms the justices, an approach that has left the administration wiggle room in its battles with district judges who’ve blocked the president’s policies.
The dynamic is on full display as the Justice Department declines to step on the gas to return Abrego Garcia.
“As the Supreme Court correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the President to conduct foreign affairs. By directly noting the deference owed to the Executive Branch, this ruling once again illustrates that activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the President’s authority to conduct foreign policy,” a DOJ spokesman said late Thursday.
But to Abrego Garcia’s attorney, “the rule of law prevailed.”
“The Supreme Court upheld the District Judge’s order that the government has to bring Kilmar home. Now they need to stop wasting time and get moving,” attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement.
The mismatch quickly came to a head as the case returned to U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis for a Friday hearing, with the administration refusing to comply with the judge’s demand for an immediate update on Abrego Garcia’s status and the steps that have been taken to return him.
“We read the Supreme Court’s order differently,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign told the judge.
Ensign said the administration was still considering what information could be provided to Xinis following the high court’s ruling and pushed back on the notion that the judge can steamroll ahead.
Xinis appeared visibly frustrated, at one point saying she was “very troubled” by the refusal. The appointee of former President Obama ordered the administration to provide daily updates until the information is provided.
“It’s quite basic. It’s not state secrets,” Xinis said. “I’m asking where one man is.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling upheld Xinis’s requirement for the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release. But the justices cautioned that Xinis’s authority only goes so far, and she may not be able to “effectuate” the man’s return.
The administration has latched onto that portion, and an instruction for Xinis to give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs,” to cast the decision as a win.
“SCOTUS rejected the lower court and made clear that a district court judge cannot exercise Article II foreign affairs powers,” Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and key adviser on immigration, wrote on X.
“The illegal alien terrorist is in the custody and control of a sovereign foreign nation,” Miller continued.
The remarks align with some of the administration’s earliest filings in the case, expressing doubts about its ability to “entreat — or even cajole” an ally into returning Abrego Garcia.
That’s in contrast with President Trump’s boasting about his ability to secure other individuals being held by foreign governments, at one point calling himself the “greatest hostage negotiator” in U.S. history.
“Wrongful deportations happen from time to time. And when the government realizes that they've done that, they facilitate the return,” Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, told reporters after Friday’s hearing.
The Trump administration’s contention it may not be able to secure Abrego Garcia’s return comes as Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is set to visit the White House Monday.
Bukele previously mocked Xinis for her handling of the case.
Other corners of Washington, however, have pushed for Abrego Garcia’s return. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus wrote to Bukele Thursday, demanding his release and requesting to visit him at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known by its Spanish acronym CECOT.
A similar dynamic played out in another case, where the Trump administration was accused of violating a judge’s oral order by flying more than 100 Venezuelan men to CECOT amid a lawsuit seeking to challenge the authority.
There too, the Supreme Court handed the Trump administration only a partial win in lifting U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order blocking the president’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to swiftly deport migrants.
Monday’s 5-4 Supreme Court decision rejected the administration’s position that it can use the rarely used law to deport Venezuelans it claims are gang members without judicial review.
“The detainees subject to removal orders under the AEA are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal. The only question is which court will resolve that challenge,” reads the court’s unsigned ruling, determining that migrants must sue in the state where they are detained, rather than in Boasberg’s D.C. court.
The next day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it a “massive legal victory.”
“This was a smackdown to a rogue, left-wing, low-level district court judge who has relentlessly tried to stop President Trump from using his core constitutional powers as head of the executive branch and as commander in chief,” Leavitt said.
But the American Civil Liberties Union, which is leading the challenge, also saw it as a win.
“The critical point of this ruling is that the Supreme Court said individuals must be given due process to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. That is an important victory,” Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney on the case, said in a statement.
The ACLU has already followed the Supreme Court’s signal and filed challenges in New York and Texas, where the group’s clients are being detained, quickly convincing judges to issue orders temporarily keeping the migrants in the country.
Abrego Garcia’s family has asserted he is not a member of MS-13 like the government has claimed but rather fled from El Salvador as a teen to escape gang violence. The government’s assertion is based on a tip from a confidential informant claiming he was involved with the gang in New York, though Abrego Garcia has never lived there.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Abrego Garcia’s wife, who is a U.S. citizen, told reporters Wednesday that her husband had been “abducted and disappeared” by the Trump administration.
His attorneys on Friday chastised the Trump administration for defying the court and making little effort to secure his release from one of the world’s most notorious prisons.
“The Government continues to delay, obfuscate, and flout court orders, while a man’s life and safety is at risk,” they wrote, noting that the government has spent more time fighting the court’s directive to seek Abrego Garcia’s return than it ever did in deporting him.
“It did not take that time to ponder whether to remove Garcia—which it effectuated within 72 hours of his unlawful seizure—and it does not need that time to comply with this Court’s and the Supreme Court’s rulings.”
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