The Trump administration gave notice late Wednesday that it would appeal a Maryland federal judge’s order that it take “all available steps to facilitate” the return of an alleged MS-13 gang member to the US following his deportation to El Salvador.
In addition to confirming that it would appeal Greenbelt District Judge Paula Xinis’ order, the Justice Department asked the Richmond, Va.-based Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to immediately stay the lower court’s demand while the appeal is heard.
Abrego Garcia sued the Trump administration on March 24, days after he was arrested in Maryland and sent to the Central American county alongside 260 other accused gang members.
The suit argued that his deportation violated a 2019 order barring him from being sent home over concerns he’d be targeted by a rival gang, like Barrio 18.
The ruling, however, didn’t block him from being sent to another country.
Xinis ordered Abrego Garcia’s return to the US by April 7.
Three days after the deadline, the US Supreme Court stepped in and ordered the feds to “facilitate” his return before sending the case back to Xinis to clarify her initial ruling.
Justice Department lawyers claimed they were fulfilling the order to “facilitate” his return by removing all domestic obstacles for Abrego Garcia to be brought back — but also insisted they can’t force El Salvador to release one of its citizens.
According to the feds, Xinis’ order that the Trump administration “take all available steps to facilitate the return” of Abrego Garcia violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers.
“The federal courts do not have the authority to press-gang the President or his agents into taking any particular act of diplomacy,” the wrote in their motion to stay Xinis’ ruling.
“Instead, in this context, the courts only have the authority to order the Executive to ‘facilitate’ the return of an alien removed abroad. And as that term has long been understood and applied, that means the Executive must remove any domestic barriers to the alien’s return; it does not, and constitutionally cannot, involve a directive to take any act upon a foreign nation. The District Court, though, has again crossed that line.”
The filing goes on to state that Xinis has gone down this “unjustifiable path, all in service of a member of a foreign terrorist organization with no valid right to be in the United States in the first place.”
Earlier Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security released documents noting that Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura –who has been pushing for him to be brought back — despite seeking a protective order on grounds of abuse in 2021.
During a meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office Monday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele told a reporter who raised Abrego Garcia’s case: “I hope you are not suggesting that I smuggle terrorists into the United States. Of course, I’m not going to do that.”
Wednesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt vowed that “if [Abrego Garcia] ever ends up back in the United States, he would immediately be deported again … He will never live in the United States of America again.”
Lawyer for Abrego Garcia didn’t immediately return a request for comment Thursday morning.
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