Posted on 04/10/25
| News Source: FOX News
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court's decision to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national living in Maryland, from an El Salvador prison where federal officials sent hundreds of suspected criminals and gang members in March.
Abrego Garcia, 29, was deported to the El Salvadoran megaprison last month for being an alleged MS-13 gang member, but his attorneys maintain he does not have any gang ties.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered federal officials to coordinate his return back to Maryland in a Monday order, calling his deportation "wholly unlawful." On Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with Xinis. "On March 15, 2025, the United States removed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador, where he is currently detained in the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT)," the order states. "The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal." "On March 15, 2025, the United States removed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador, where he is currently detained in the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT)," the order states. "The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal."
The Justice Department responded to the order in a statement to Fox News in a statement.
"As the Supreme Court correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the President to conduct foreign affairs," the statement says. "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."
Federal court filings say Abrego Garcia fled Garcia to escape gang violence. Starting around 2006, gang members "stalked, hit, and threatened to kidnap and kill him in order to coerce his parents to succumb to their increasing demands for extortion."
He entered the United States illegally in 2011 and traveled to Maryland, where his older brother, a U.S. citizen, lived.